THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/driftofromanticiOOmore 


^oolifi  bp  Paul  €lmcr  jlorc 


THE  GREAT  REFUSAL;  Being  Letters  of  a 
Dreamer  in  Gotham.  A  Romance  told  in  Let- 
ters and  Verses.     i6mo,  Ji.oo. 

A  CENTURY  OF  INDIAN  EPIGRAMS.  Chiefly 
from  the  Sanskrit  of  lihartrihari.     i6mo,  ;Ji.oo. 

THE  PROMETHEUS  BOUND  OF  >ESCHY- 
LUS.  Translated  into  English.  With  au  In- 
troduction.    i2mo,  75  cents. 

HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
Boston  and  New  York 


THE  DRIFT  OF  ROMANTICISM 


SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 
EIGHTH    SERIES 


The  Drift  of  Romanticism 

SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 
EIGHTH  SERIES 

By  Paul  Elmer  More 


**It  is  a  question  of  temperament,  or  of  more  or 

less   immersion    in    nature The    spiritualist 

finds  himself  driven  to  express  his  faith  by  a 
series  of  scepticisms." —  Emerson. 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,    1913,   BY  PAUL  BLMER   MORE 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  March  rqij 


ADVERTISEMENT 

Of  the  essays  in  this  volume  those  on  Pater  and 
Nietzsche  were  first  printed,  in  part,  in  the 
Nation  and  New  York  Evening  Post,  and  the 
Nietzsche  was  afterwards  issued  as  a  small  book. 
Some  paragraphs  of  those  on  Beckford,  Newman, 
and  Fiona  Macleod  are  taken  from  reviews  of 
current  publications.  The  rest  of  the  volume  has 
not  before  appeared  in  print. 


PREFACE 

To  Frank  Jewett  Mather,  Jr. 

Dear  Mather,  — When  the  essay  on  Pater, 
now  in  this  volume,  was  first  printed  in  the  Na- 
tion, you,  who  have  been  in  general  so  kindly  a 
reader  of  my  work,  were  honest  enough  to  tell  me 
you  did  not  like  it  at  all.  What  profit  was  it,  you 
asked,  to  take  an  author  whose  writing  is  filled 
with  the  subtlest  appreciation  of  the  world's 
beauty,  and  stretch  him  on  the  rack  of  a  harsh 
ethicaL  formula?  Why  not  follow  the  lure  and 
enjoy  the  spell  of  romance  wherever  it  meets  the 
eye?  Pater  was  a  lover  and  confessor  of  strange 
souls;  should  not,  then,  a  true  critic  come  to  him 
in  the  same  receptive  spirit?  Well,  I  dare  say  you 
were  right.  I  dare  say  other  readers  of  the  essay 
were  right,  who,  in  print  and  in  speech,  objected 
to  its  severity  with  less  friendly  intention.  My 
preface,  you  see,  is  a  sort  of  apology  for  what 
may  seem  a  lack  of  sympathetic  taste,  even  of 
understanding. 

Yet  if  it  is  an  apology,  it  is  not  altogether  an 
admission  of  wrong-doing.  There^is  a  kind  of 
cri^dcism  that  limits  itself  to  looking  at  the  thing 
in  itself,  or  at  the  parts  of  a  thing  as  they  succes- 
sively strike  the  mind.  This  is  properly  the  way 
of  sympathy,  and  those  who  choose  this  way  are 


viii  PREFACE 

right  in  saying  that  it  is  absurd  or  merely  ill-tem- 
pered to  dwell  on  what  is  ugly  in  a  work  of  art, 
or  false,  or  incomplete.  But  there  is  a  place  also 
for^nother  kind  of  criticism,  which  is  not  so  much 
directed  to  the  individual  thing  as  to  its  relation 
with  other  things,  and  to  its  place  as  cause  or 
efifect  in  a  whole  group  of  tendencies.  No  criti- 
cism, to  be  sure,  can  follow  one  or  the  other  of 
these  methods  exclusively,  as  no  product  of  art 
can  ever  be  entirely  isolated  in  its  genesis  or  alto- 
gether merged  in  the  current  of  the  day.  The 
highest  criticism  would  contrive  to  balance  these 
methods  in  such  manner  that  neither  the  occa- 
sional merits  of  a  work  nor  its  general  influence 
would  be  unduly  subordinated,  and  in  so  far  as 
these  essays  fail  to  strike  such  a  balance  —  I  wish 
this  were  their  only  failure  —  they  err  sadly  from 
the  best  model.  Yet  there  are  times,  are  there 
not?  when  the  general  drift  of  ideas  is  so  domin- 
ant that  a  critic  may  at  least  be  pardoned  if,  with 
his  eye  on  these  larger  relations,  he  docs  not  bring 
out  quite  so  clearly  as  he  might  the  distinguishing 
marks  of  the  writer  or  book  with  which  he  is  im- 
mediately dealing.  And  if  to  his  mind  ihis^^energl 
trend  appears  to.be_carrying  the  world  towards 
the  desolation  of  what  he  holds  very  dear,  you 
will  at  least  understand  how  he  may  come  to 
slight  the  sounder  aspects  of  any  Avork  which  as  a 
whole  belongs  to  the  dangerous  influences  of  the 
age.   Now,  the  romantic  movement,  beneath  all 


PREFACE  ix 

its  show  of  expansion  and  vitality,  seems  to  mc 
at  its  heart  to  be  just  such  a  drift  towards  disin- 
tegration and  disease.  In  that  conviction  I  have 
here  treated  certain  great  names  more  for  what 
is  typical  in  them  of  their  age  than  for  what  each 
may  have  created  of  peculiar  excellence. 

Yet  I  would  not  have  you  suppose  that  I  am 
insensible  to  the  beauty  of  much  that  these  men 
have  written  or  to  the  magic  that  is  commonly 
connected  with  the  term  romanticism.  Indeed, 
from  one  point  of  view,  to  admit  such  insensibility 
would  be  to  place  one's  self  outside  of  the  appeal 
of  what  is  highest  and  purest  in  all  poetry.  For 
it  must  be  observed  that  the  word  romanticism  is 
used  in  two  quite  different  ways,  and  that  the 
ignorance  or  neglect  of  this  ambiguity  has  led  to 
endless  confusion  of  standards.  On  the  one  hand, 
by  romantic  we  often  mean,  whether  rightly  or 
wrongly,  certain  attributes  of  poetry  of  every 
^e  when  it  rises  from  the  common_  level  to  the 
dimaxes  of  inspiration  —  thcmoments  in  it  when 
we  are  thrilled  by  the  indefinable  spell  of  strange- 
ness wedded  to  beauty,  when  we  are  startled  by 
the  unexpected  vision  of  mystery  beyond  the  cir- 
cle of  appearances  that  wrap  us  in  the  dull  com- 
monplace of  daily  usage,  and  suddenly  "the  im- 
measurable heavens  break  open  to  their  highest." 
In  that  absolute  sense  of  the  word  there  are  pas- 
sages in  the  poets  of  antiquity  which  are  as  ro- 
mantic as  any  to  be  found  in  the  literature  of  the 


/> 


X  PREFACE 

nineteenth  century.  The  Odyssey  in  particular 
is  shot  through  and  through  with  the  sheer  won- 
der of  beauty.  You  will  recall,  for  instance,  the 
three  lines  of  the  tenth  book  when  Eurylochus 
and  his  band,  having  left  their  weeping  comrades 
and  penetrated  the  thick  woods  of  ^aea,  reach 
the  lonely  house  of  Circe  in  the  clearing: 

Soon  at  her  vestibule  they  pause,  and  hear 

A  voice  of  singing  from  a  lovely  place, 

Where  Circe  weaves  her  great  web  year  by  year.* 

And  in  the  drama  you  will  remember  the  report 
of  the  marvellous  end  of  the  errors  and  sufferings 
of  (Edipus,  when  warned  by  the  celestial  voice  he 
and  Theseus,  having  bade  farewell  for  a  while  to 
their  companions,  go  alone  into  the  grove  of  Co- 
lonus  to  await  the  mystic  translation : 

We  beheld 
The  man  —  nay,  we  beheld  him  not  again, 
But  Theseus  only,  with  one  hand  upraised 
As  if  to  shade  his  eyes  before  some  fear. 
Fallen  strangely,  seen,  and  not  to  be  endured. 

This  \Yonder  joined  with  beauty  and  this  sud- 
denly appearing  awe  of  the  other  world  are  thor- 
oughly characteristic  of  the  great  moments  of 
Greek  poetry,  and  we  shall  find  as  pure  romance 
of  this  sort  in  the  literature  historically  classic  as 
in  the  literature  historically  romantic.  The  mind 
closed  to  this  poetic  ecstasy  may  feel  itself  at 
home  with  the  so-called  pseudo-classical  writers, 

•  From  the  translation  by  P.  S.  Worseley. 


PREFACE  xi 

but  it  shall  never  be  free  of  the  society  of  Tenny- 
son or  Shakespeare  or  Homer.  This  is  so  plain 
that  I  cannot  see  how  we  gain  much  critically 
by  insisting  on  the  absolute  use  of  the  word 
romantic,  even  if,  as  I  much  doubt,  it  has  any 
etymological  justification.  But  there  is  another 
use  of  the  word,  as  it  is  associated  with  a  definite 
historical  movement  of  modern  Europe,  which 
is  freighted  with  lessons  for  the  critic  of  letters 
and  life.  No  age,  of  course,  can  be  entirely  iso- 
lated. Germs  and  anticipations  of  what  we  call 
more  precisely  historical  romanticism  are  easily 
found  here  and  there  before  Rousseau  and  Blake 
and  the  German  Schlegels,  as  they  all  but  devel- 
oped into  a  complete  literature  in  ancient  Alex- 
andria. In  particular  no  little  part  of  Virgil's 
appeal  to  our  ears  is  probably  due  to  his  antici- 
pations of  modern  sentiment.  If  any  one  passage 
may  be  singled  out  as  containing  the  quintessen- 
tial charm  of  his  genuis,  it  would  be  those  haunt- 
ing lines  that  describe  the  first  voyage  of  ^neas 
up  the  Italian  river: 

Soft  slide  the  boats  along  the  Tiber  stream: 
While  the  waves  wonder,  and  in  wonder  dream 
The  forests,  at  the  flash  of  unknown  shields, 
And  painted  prows  that  swim  the  liquid  fields. 
The  men,  still  rowing,  tire  the  night  and  day; 
And  up  the  lengthening  reaches  make  their  way, 
Covered  by  various  trees;  and  as  they  glide, 
Cut  the  green  woods  upon  the  placid  tide. 

Virgil  is  the  most  impossible  of  all  poets  to 


xii  PREFACE 

translate,  but  it  is  owing  to  no  treachery  on  my 
part  that  you  will  detect  in  this  scene  hints  of 
that  peculiar  sentiment  which  predominates  jn 
modern  verse  —  the  wonder  and  strangeness  that 
go  with  the  dissolving  together  of  the  human  soul 
ari^  nature,  the  vague  re  very  that  takes  the  place 
of  insight,  the  pantheism  that  has  forgotten  the 
triie  .surprise  of  the  supernatural.  Nevertheless, 
at  bottom  the  age  of  Augustus  remained  loyal  to 
the  classic  tradition,  and  the  M?teid  was  more 
inspired  by  the  imperial  growth  of  Rome  than  by 
the  coming  dissolution  of  society.  Even  those 
passages  in  which,  as  in  the  lines  just  quoted,  the 
Alexandrian  influence  is  unmistakable,  affect  us 
in  the  end  somehow  differently  from  the  same  sort 
of  thing  in  the  poets  of  our  own  time.  The  history 
of  that  other  civilization  is  closed  and  its  pro- 
blems are  solved ;  it  lies  so  far  back  in  the  past  that 
we  may  savour  the  sweetness  of  its  flowers  with 
no  disturbing  thought  of  the  decay  which  they 
concealed.  Since  Virgil  wrote,  a  great  hope  and 
a  great  despair  have  traversed  the  world. 

You  will  see,  then,  that  in  these  essays  I  use  the 
word  romantic,  not  exactly  in  a  narrow  sense,  for 
I  include  much  more  than  the  work  of  the  group 
of  literary  men  who  appropriated  the  name,  but 
in  a  strictly  historical  sense,  as  a  convenient 
term  for  what  I  take  to  be  the  dominant  tendency 
and  admitted  ideal  of  the  modern  world.  Often, 
indeed,   the   note  of   absolute   romance  breaks 


PREFACE  /xiii 


through  the  more  characteristic  music  of  the 
clay,  and  there  is  a  great  deal  in  the  nineteenth 
century  which  otherwise  oversteps  the  bounds  of 
my  definition  —  that  need  scarcely  be  said ;  but 
the  more  deeply  we  penetrate  into  the  various 
practical  and  intellectual  currents  of  the  age,  the 
more  clearly  do  we  discern,  beneath  all  their  ap- 
parent divergency,  the  overmastering  force  of  a 
common  origin  and  a  common  direction.  If  I  had 
to  designate  very  briefly  this  underlying  princi- 
ple which  gives  to  historic  romance  a  character 
racfically  different  from  the  mystery  and  wonder 
of  classic  art,  I  should  define  it  as  that  expansivF 
conceit  of  the  emotions  which  goes  with  the  illu- 
sion of  beholding  the  infinite  within  the  stream  of 
nature  itself  instead  of  apart  from  the  stream. 
The  question  raised  finally  is  thus  one  of  dualism: 
Is  there,  or  is  there  not,  some  element  of  man's 
being  superior  to  instinct  and  reason,  some  power 
that  acts  as  a  stay  upon  the  flowing  impulses  of 
nature^  without  whose  authoritative  check  rea- 
son  herself  must  in  the  end  be  swept  away  in  the 
dissojution  of  the  everlasting  flux?  In  the  Defini- 
tions of  Dualism  at  the  close  of  this  volume  I  have 
sought  to  unfold  the  consequences  of  the  only 
answer  to  this  question  that  comes  to  me  when  I 
listen  to  the  still  voice  of  consciousness.  If  my 
language  here  appears  perhaps  to  be  dogmatic 
and  to  show  disrespect  for  the  terminology  of  the 
present-day  schools,  you  will  remember  that  I 


xiv  PREFACE 

have  put  down  merely  a  series  of  definitions  and 
have  not  purposed  to  write  a  treatise.  And  above 
all  you  will  absolve  me  from  the  presumption  of 
attempting  to  construct  a  new  system  of  philoso- 
phy, and  from  the  folly  of  aiming  to  be  original 
where  originality  would  undermine  the  very  basis 
on  which  I  stand.  If  I  have  hearkened  to  the 
voice,  it  is  because  with  this  key  alone  I  have 
been  able  to  find  any  meaning  in  my  own  experi- 
ence of  life,  and  still  more  because  its  admoni- 
tion seems  to  me  to  correspond  with  the  inner 
core  of  truth  which,  however  diversified  in  terms 
and  overlaid  with  extraneous  matter,  has  been 
handed  down  unchanged  by  that  long  line  of 
seers  and  sages,  from  Plato  and  Aristotle  to  the 
present  day,  who  form  what  may  be  called  the 
church  universal  of  the  spirit.  Sit  anima  mea  cum 
philosophis. 

You  have  my  apology,  my  dear  Mather,  which 
you  will  not,  I  trust,  regard  as  a  mere  aggrava- 
tion of  the  offence  it  is  meant  to  condone.  At  any 
rate,  you  will  be  ready  to  congratulate  me  on  the 
vow,  here  recorded,  to  abjure  disputation  for  a 
while  and  to  return  in  the  next  volume  of  these 
essays  to  the  less  provocative  aspects  of  litera' 
ture. 

P.  E.  M. 

New  York,  September  i,  191 2. 


CONTENTS 

Preface vii 

William  Beckford i 

Cardinal  Newman 37 

Walter  Pater 81 

Fiona  Macleod 117 

Nietzsche 145 

Huxley 191 

Definitions  of  Dualism        ....  245 


WILLIAM   BECKFORD 


The  Drift  of  Romanticism 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD 

If  any  one  were  to  ask  me  why  I  had  chosen 
the  master  of  Fonthill  for  one  of  the  types  of  ro- 
manticism, I  am  afraid  my  first  answer  would 
have  to  be,  that  I  had  been  reading  the  new  vol- 
ume of  his  Life  and  Letters,  by  Lewis  Melville.^ 
Nor  is  it  even  a  very  good  book :  on  the  contrary, 
Mr.  Melville's  transcription  of  the  letters  shows 
signs  of  carelessness;  his  portrait  of  the  writer 
suggests  an  attempt  at  whitewashing,  while 
his  interpretation  of  Beckford's  published  works 
fails  to  give  their  real  significance  in  literature. 
But  he  has  had  access  in  the  Charter  Room  of 
Hamilton  Palace  to  Beckford's  correspondence 
and  papers  which  were  preserved  by  his  surviving 
daughter,  wife  of  the  tenth  Duke  of  Hamilton. 
The  letters,  if  capriciously  edited,  give  us,  never- 
theless, an  insight  into  Beckford's  character,  and 
especially  into  his  formative  years,  that  was  quite 
lacking  before.  And  they  are  really  of  consider- 
able importance  in  understanding  the  great  revo- 
lution that  remade  literature  at  the  beginning  of 

1   The  Life  and   Letters  of  William   Beckford  of  Fonthill.    By   Lewis 
Melville.  New  York:  Duflaeld  &  Co.  1910. 


4      THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

the  last  century.  His  early  letters  fairly  teem 
with  suggestions  of  Rousseau  and  Werther  and 
Ossian  and  Chateaubriand,  while  his  Vathek  was, 
as  any  reader  of  Byron  knows,  one  of  the  sources 
of  the  Orientalism  that  went  with  medievalism 
and  half  a  dozen  other  isms  into  the  savoury 
cauldron  of  the  romantic  incantation.  But  his 
life  was  even  more  influential  than  his  books. 
Here  was  a  man  who  had  not  only  the  courage  but 
the  means  also  to  carry  into  practice  what  other 
men  were  merely  dreaming.  He  was  the  richest 
commoner  of  England  and  was  willing  to  squan- 
der his  fortune  on  an  Aladdin's  palace,  which 
rose,  and  fell,  like  a  symbol  of  the  rebeUious,  as- 
piring imagination. 

William  Beckford  was  born  at  Fonthill- 
Giffard,  in  Wiltshire,  October  i,  1760.  His 
father,  Alderman  and  twice  Lord  Mayor  of  Lon- 
don, the  celebrated  radical  and  friend  of  Wilkes, 
had  inherited  an  enormous  estate  in  Jamaica. 
His  first  wife  was  a  widow,  with  a  daughter, 
Elizabeth  March  (afterwards  Mrs.  Hervey),  who 
wrote  some  foolish  sentimental  novels  which  her 
step-brother  William  praised  as  a  boy  and  carica- 
tured, in  Azemia,  as  a  man.  The  Alderman's 
second  wife,  the  mother  of  William,  belonged  to 
the  Abercorn  branch  of  the  Hamilton  family. 
One  of  the  Alderman's  brothers,  William's  uncle 
Julines,  had  a  son  Peter,  who  married,  in  1773, 
Louisa  Pitt,  second  daughter  of  Lord  Rivers.  For 


WILLIAM   BECKFORD  5 

Mrs.  Peter  Beckford  and  her  sister,  apparently 
Marcia-Lucy  who  in  1789  married  James  Fox- 
Lane  of  Bramham  Park  (Mr.  Melville  leaves  these 
relationships  somewhat  in  confusion),  William 
had  a  profound  attachment.  From  the  very  be- 
ginning the  boy  was  subject  to  influences  that 
shaped  his  life  to  its  peculiar  end.  His  father, 
the  great  Alderman,  was,  as  history  presents 
him,  a  clear-sighted  man  of  affairs,  yet  there 
must  somewhere  be  a  twist  in  the  mind  of  a  man 
who  clings  to  an  overblown  estate,  including 
many  thousands  of  slaves,  and  who  at  the  same 
time  allies  himself  with  a  movement  which  leads 
naturally  to  the  belief  that  all  property  is  theft. 
WTien  only  ten,  William  lost  his  father  and  fell 
largely  under  the  management  of  his  mother,  and 
of  other  women,  notably  his  step-sister  and  Mrs. 
Peter  Beckford,  who  encouraged  him  in  the  wild- 
est broodings  and  most  fantastic  dreams.  At  this 
age,  instead  of  undergoing  the  wholesome  disci- 
pline of  public  school  and  university,  he  was,  by 
the  advice  of  his  godfather.  Lord  Chatham, 
placed  under  the  tutelage  of  the  Rev.  John  Let- 
tice,  who  may  have  been  a  scholarly  and  other- 
wise sensible  man,  but  at  least  was  unable  to 
drag  the  boy  out  of  the  world  of  revery  into  which 
he  had_iallen.  When  seventeen  he  went  with 
Lettice  as  "bear-leader"  to  Geneva,  where  he 
continued  his  studies  for  a  year  and  a  half, 
travelling  at  intervals  and  seeing  among  other 


6     THE    DRIFT    OF    ROMANTICISM 

celebrities  the  aged  Voltaire,  who  bestowed  on 
the  lad  one  of  his  ever-ready  blessings.  From 
Geneva  we  have  the  first  of  his  letters,  some  of 
them  addressed  in  the  transcription  to  his  step- 
sister, Mrs.  Elizabeth  Hervey,  others  appar- 
ently to  the  same  person.  The  tenor  of  the  boy's 
musings  may  be  gathered  from  an  extract: 

Dark  Clouds  roll  from  the  North  and  bring  on  the 
Night.  I  see  lights  at  a  distance  moving  towards  the 
City;  perhaps  some  one  is  there,  who  will  direct  me  to 
the  Gate.  I  call  .  .  .  ;  ^  but  the  bellowing  of  the  tide 
deadens  my  Voice.  I  am  alone  on  the  Shore  .  .  .  dread 
is  my  situation.  .  .  .  The  blasts  increase  and  wistle 
dismally  in  my  ears.  I  shudder.  .  .  .  What  shriek  was 
that?  —  no  Bird  is  on  the  wing!  ...  I  must  hasten 
home,  and  yet  such  is  the  darkness  that  I  may  wander 
for  hours  and  not  find  the  path  that  leads  to  the  Gate 
next  the  port.  I  tremble,  and  of  what  am  I  afraid?  — 
ah !  too  well  I  know  what  means  those  shades,  for  surely 
I  beheld  something  flit  before  me  pale  as  the  Ashes  of  an 
Altar.  Something  roze  on  a  Wave  and  sighed.  See  it 
rears  itself  again  and  moans  —  it  moans.  —  O  how  am  I 
deceived  or  that  shade  wears  the  resemblance  of  one  that 
is  no  more  and  that  was  most  dear  to  me  ...  cruel  illu- 
sion. Think,  another  wave  rose,  foamed  at  my  feet,  cast 
its  spray  on  high  and  offered  to  my  affrighted  Imagina- 
tion a  form  like  yours. 

That  is  the  sort  of  thing  Ossian  was  doing  in 
young  generous  minds. 

At  the  end  of  1778  Beckford  was  back  in  Eng- 
land, pouring  out  his  wild  revolt  in  letters  from 

'  There  is  nothing  here  or  elsewhere  to  indicate  whether  these  points 
are  in  the  original  or  mean  an  excision  made  by  the  editor. 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  7 

Fon thill  —  for  instance:  "  I  will  seclude  myself  if 
possible  from  the  World,  in  the  midst  of  the  Em- 
pire, and  converse  many  hours  every  day  with 
you,  Mesron  and  Nouronihar";  and  satisfying 
his  sense  of  grotesque  humour  by  writing  his  first 
book,  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Extraordinary 
Painters,  which,  for  the  benefit  of  the  house- 
keeper at  Fonthill  who  showed  strangers  through 
the  galleries,  attributed  the  pictures  to  such 
artists  as  Og  of  Basan,  Watersouchy  of  Amster^ 
dam,  Herr  Sucrewasser  of  Vienna,  and  the  like. 
Mr.  Melville  seems  to  see  a  contradiction  in  this 
union  of  sentiment  and  burlesque  in  the  same 
mind ;  they  are  in  fact  but  different  aspects  of  the 
same  desire  to  escape  from  reality  and  have  often 
gone  together,  from  the  days  of  the  double  theme 
in  Spanish  drama  to  the  magnificent  audacities 
of  Don  Juan. 

After  a  year  and  a  half  Beckford  was  off  with 
his  tutor  on  the  grand  tour.  This  lasted  for  about 
two  years,  and  was  interrupted  by  his  return  to 
England  to  celebrate  his  coming  of  age.  In  May 
of  1782  he  went  abroad  for  the  third  time,  travel- 
ling now  with  all  the  state  that  befitted  one  who 
had  come  into  control  of  an  enormous  fortune. 
Some  time  in  the  interval  between  his  second 
and  third  journeys  he  had  met  at  Bath  Lady 
Margaret  Gordon,  with  whom  he  fell  in  love  and 
whom  he  married  May  5,  1783,  coming  back  to 
England  for  this  purpose.    Two  children  were 


8      THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

born  to  them;  but  after  a  union  of  three  years 
his  wife  died,  and  the  children,  seeming,  so  far 
as  the  letters  indicate,  to  have  passed  quite  out 
of  his  mind,  were  placed  under  the  charge  of 
his  mother,  while  he  himself  was  hurried  about 
Europe  by  his  friends  who,  according  to  his  biog- 
rapher, were  "fearful  of  his  losing  his  reason  or 
taking  his  life."  Mr.  Melville  also  asserts  that 
"the  marriage  had  been  an  ideal  union,"  and 
thinks  that  the  memory  of  his  loss,  "acting  upon 
an  emotional  nature,  may  have  had  more  to  do 
with  his  subsequent  retirement  than  is  generally 
supposed."  It  may  be  so,  yet  such  practical  en- 
durance of  grief  scarcely  accords  with  the  ro- 
mantic temperament,  as  one  reads  the  annals  of 
those  days;  and  indeed  there  is  an  aspect  of  this 
whole  affair  which  is  unpleasantly  suggestive,  but 
which  cannot  be  entirely  passed  over  without  a 
gross  misrepresentation  of  what  Beckford  stood 
for  to  his  contemporaries.  During  his  first  visit 
abroad  he  was  writing  to  some  unnamed  corre- 
spondent, probably  either  his  step-sister,  Mrs. 
Hervey,  or  his  cousin  by  marriage,  Mrs.  Peter 
Beckford,  in  a  mingled  vein  of  high-flown  ego- 
tism and  love  which  may  have  meant  almost 
anything.  And  again  during  his  second  journey, 
still  before  he  had  met  Lady  Margaret  Gordon, 
his  letters  are  filled  with  disquieting  confessions. 
At  the  outset  we  find  him  writing  from  Margate 
to  a  correspondent  unnamed:  "Envy  me,  for  I 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  9 

am  going  to  be  wrapped  in  the  arms  of  Darkness 
and  Illusions."  And  then  follows  a  series  of  let- 
ters to  Mrs.  Peter  Beckford,  which  leave  little 
doubt  of  part  of  the  story  at  least: 

Would  to  God  [he  writes  from  Spa]  the  memorable 
Fountains  of  Merlin  were  still  attainable  —  I  might 
then  be  happy  with  the  hopes  of  forgetting  a  passion 
which  preys  upon  my  soul.  I  cannot  break  my  chains 
—  I  struggle  and  the  more  attempts  I  make  to  shake 
them  off  the  firmer  they  adhere  to  me.  This  wayward 
Love  of  mine  makes  me  insensible  to  everything  —  I 
move  feverishly  from  place  to  place  —  but  it  is  in  vain 
• — it  pursues  me  —  pursues  me  with  such  swiftness! 
seizes  upon  me  and  marks  me  for  its  own.  .  .  .  Deli- 
cious Hours  that  are  gone  for  ever.  Your  recollection 
is  my  sole  comfort.   I  live  by  your  remembrance. 

Were  this  all  it  would  mean  no  more  than  any 
fantastic  and  unwholesome  passion,  but  in  the 
letters  written  to  the  same  person  during  his 
third  journey,  that  is  while  he  was  courting  Lady 
Margaret,  apparently  against  the  will  of  her  rela- 
tives, there  are  a  number  of  passages  which  can 
be  explained  only  by  assuming  a  double  or  triple 
passion  of  a  sort  that  is  as  bewildering  as  it  is 
oflfensive.  I  will  not  quote  at  large  from  these 
let^rs,  because  their  tone  is  not  precisely  edify- 
ing ^nd  because  also  I  frankly  do  not  entirely 
understand  the  situation.  It  is  enough  to  indi- 
cate the  transaction  by  a  few  words  from  the 
close  of  the  letter  of  August  7,  1782: 


10     THE    DRIFT    OF    ROMANTICISM 

At  Christmas  may  not  I  hope  to  possess  you  at  Font- 
hill  and  tell  you  again  and  again  that  you  have  never 
been  absent  from  my  thoughts?    Convey  the  enclosed 

to .   She  has  written  me  a  Letter  that  leaves  me  not 

the  smallest  doubt  of  her  affection.   The  flame  spreads, 
I  perceive  —  you  told  me  it  would. 

Mr.  Melville  gives  no  explanation  of  the  oppo- 
sition to  Beckford's  marriage.    It  should  seem 
that,  if  his  conduct  corresponded  with  his  words, 
there  were  reasons  grave  enough  why  an  alliance 
with  him  might  be  regarded  as  undesirable.  Beck- 
ford  himself  wrote  to  the  Rev.  Samuel  Henley, 
thanking  him  for  silencing  "the  hiss  of  serpents 
at  Fonthill,"   and  declaring   that   "neither  Or- 
lando nor  Brandi  were  ever  more  tormented  by 
demons  and  spectres  in  an  enchanted  castle  than 
"William  Beckford  in  his  own  hall  by  his  nearest 
relatives."    It  might  be  hinted  that  a  serpent  is 
/  generally  to  be  found  in  such  a  morbid  paradise_ 
0     /   as  this  young  gentleman  sought  to  create  about 
[_  himself. 

Of  the  still  uglier  rumours  about  Beckford's 
life  I  should  prefer  not  even  to  hint.  Mr.  Melville 
declares  categorically  that  there  is  not  a  particle 
of  evidence  to  support  them,  and  dismisses  them 
as  preposterous.  That  may  be  true;  I  trust  it  is. 
Yet  Mr.  Melville  himself  admits  that  Beckford's 
Dreams,  Waking  Thoughts,  and  Incidents,  printed 
at  this  time,  was  probably  withdrawn  from  circu- 
lation because  its  romantic  tendency  might  give 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  ii 

some  colour  to  the  stories  about  the  author.  He 
does  not  cite,  as  indeed  there  was  no  need  to  cite, 
Byron's  letter  on  Beckford.  He  does,  however, 
give  Samuel  Rogers's  vivid  description  of  a  visit 
to  Fonthill  in  a  letter  to  Byron  dated  February  8, 
1818: 

I  was  in  that  country  [Wiltshire]  the  other  day,  and 
paid  a  visit  to  the  Abbot  of  Fonthill.  The  woods  re- 
called Vallombrosa,  the  Abbey  the  Duomo  at  Milan, 
and,  as  for  its  interior,  the  length  of  the  galleries  (only 
think  of  330  feet),  the  splendour  of  the  cabinets,  and 
the  magical  illusions  of  light  and  shade,  realized  all  my 
visions.  Then  he  played  and  sung;  and  the  effect  was 
singular  —  like  the  pealings  of  a  distant  choir,  now  swell- 
ing, now  dying  away.  He  read  me  his  travels  in  Portu- 
gal, and  the  stories  related  in  that  small  chamber  in  the 
Palace  of  Eblis. 

Having  quoted  so  much,  and  having  added  part 
of  Rogers's  account  of  the  visit  in  his  Table-Talk, 
Mr.  Melville  in  fairness  should  have  added 
Rogers's  comment  on  those  unpublished  episodes  ^ 
designed  for  Vathek:  "They  are  extremely  fine, 
but  very  objectionable,  on  account  of  their  sub- 


•  Since  this  essay  was  written  Mr.  Melville  has  published  these  tales 
from  the  MS.  found  at  Hamilton  Palace  {The  Episodes  of  Vathek,  with 
a  translation  by  Sir  Frank  T.  Marzials;  London:  Stephen  Swift  &  Co., 
1912).  The  best  of  them.  The  Story  of  Zulkais,  deals  with  the  incestu- 
ous love  of  a  twin  brother  and  sister.  "  We  were  plunged,"  says  the  hero- 
ine, "  both  successively  and  together,  into  a  hell-broth  which  was  in- 
tended to  impart  to  us  a  strength  and  intelligence  more  than  human, 
but  has  only  instilled, into  our  veins  the  ardent  ehxir  of  a  too  exquisite 
sensibility,  and  the  poison  of  an  insatiable  desire."  The  events  that  fol- 
low this  magic  immersion  at  birth  are  related  with  great  power  of  gro- 
tesque invention. 


12    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

jects.  Indeed,  they  show  that  the  mind  of  the 
author  was,  to  a  certain  degree,  diseased." 

But  enough  of  this  subject,  which  might  have 
been  passed  over  altogether  in  an  essay,  were  it 
not  that  Beckford  has  a  place  in  literature  largely 
for  the  very  things  which  his  biographer  repre- 
sents him  not  to  have  been.  It  is  pleasanter,  and 
not  less  significant,  to  turn  to  the  Aladdin-like 
retreat  from  the  world  which  Rogers,  the  con- 
noisseur, found  so  fascinating.  I  follow  Mr. 
Melville's  narrative  closely. 

One  of  the  reasons  for  Beckford 's  return  to 
England,  in  1781,  from  the  grand  tour  was,  as  I 
have  said,  that  he  might  celebrate  his  coming  of 
age  in  a  manner  befitting  the  fame  of  Fonthill. 
The  festivities,  which  lasted  for  a  week,  followed 
the  usual  custom  of  the  day,  and  might  be  dis- 
missed with  a  word,  except  for  the  fact  that  they 
seem  to  have  been  one  of  the  influences  that 
shaped  the  rest  of  his  life : 

My  spirits  are  not  sufficiently  rampant  [he  writes  to 
Lady  Harnilton]  to  describe  the  tumult  of  balls,  con- 
certs and  illuminations  in  which  we  were  engaged  here 

a    fortnight   ago Above    ten    thousand    people   all 

neatly  dressed  covered  the  lawn  and  the  hills  which  rise 
over  it.  The  glory  of  bright  blue  coats  and  scarlet  far- 
thingales made  the  distant  slopes  as  gay  as  a  field  of 

poppies The  view  from    the  noble    portico  of   the 

house  presented  that  of  a  great  piazza  600  feet  by  460 
feet.  Most  travellers  were  reminded  of  the  area  of  St. 
Peter's,  and  you  may  imagine  the  thousands  and  thou- 


^A^ILLIAM    BECKFORD  13 

sands  of  lamps  that  shone  forth  as  soon  as  it  was 
evening  did  not  destroy  the  illusion.  The  bold  spaces  of 
the  colonnades  and  loftiness  of  the  portico  certainly 
favoured  it.  On  the  desert  down  which  terminates 
the  woody  region  of  Fonthill  blazed  a  series  of  fires. 
Their  light  was  doubtless  the  reverse  of  mournful, 
but  still  perhaps  you  would  have  thought  of  Troy  and 
the  funeral  of  Hector.  Every  now  and  then  the  shouts 
of  the  populace  and  the  sound  of  the  wind  instruments 
filled  the  air.  At  intervals  mortars  were  discharged  and 
a  girandola  of  rockets  burst  into  clear  bluish  stars 
that  cast  a  bright  light  for  miles.  On  the  left  of  the 
house  rises  a  lofty  steep  mantled  with  tall  oaks  amongst 
which  a  temple  of  truly  classical  design  discovers  it- 
self. This  building  (sacred  to  the  Lares)  presented  a  con- 
tinued glow  of  saffron-coloured  flame,  and  the  throng 
assembled  before  it  looked  devilish  by  contrast. 

These  scenes  at  Fonthill,  ending  with  the  ne- 
cessary touch  of  diaboUsm,  sound  almost  like  a 
chapter  of  Vathek,  and  indeed  they  certainly 
combined  with  Beckford's  early  reading  of  the 
Arabian  Nights  and  later  acquaintance  with  the 
Oriental  tales  then  popular  in  France  to  inspire 
that  strange  book.  He  himself  gave  this  explan- 
ation to  Cyrus  Redding,  and  declared  that  the 
great  Hall  at  Fonthill,  with  its  many  doors 
opening  into  dim  corridors,  suggested  to  him  the 
idea  of  the  Hall  of  Eblis.  But  the  magnificent 
building,  which  had  been  erected  by  his  father 
in  1755  on  the  site  of  an  old  mansion  supposed  to 
have  been  designed  by  Inigo  Jones,  did  not  long 
content  the  new  master.    For  twenty  years  he 


14    THE    DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

found  his  amusement  in  superintending  the  erec- 
tion of  a  new  group  of  buildings,  which  was  one 
of  the  marvels  of  the  age.  So  impatient  was  he  of 
the  inevitable  delays  of  building  that  at  one  time 
the  royal  works  at  St.  George's  Chapel,  Windsor, 
were  interrupted  by  the  drafting  of  some  five 
hundred  men  to  labour  in  continuous  gangs  at 
Fonthill.  By  night  the  work  was  pushed  on  by 
torchlight,  often  under  the  immediate  direction 
of  the  owner.  It  is  characteristic  of  the  man  and 
the  age  that  he  should  have  offered  a  humanitar- 
ian excuse  for  his  caprice,  saying  that  his  purpose 
was  to  give  employment  to  workingmen  in  dis- 
tress; but  it  is  not  very  intelligent  in  his  bio- 
grapher to  accept  such  a  pretext  on  its  face  value. 
The  methods  and  the  result  set  the  tongues  of 
England  a- wag ;  and  no  wonder.  Here  was  a  man 
endowed  with  what  seemed  then  unlimited 
wealth,  who  was  ready  to  satisfy  his  whimsical 
taste  and  disorganized  fancy,  at  any  expense,  in 
timber  and  cement.  It  was  as  if  some  one  in  that 
staid  century  had  gained  control  over  a  group  of 
genii  out  of  the  Arabian  Nights  and  had  set  them 
to  raising  a  magic  structure  for  his  delectation. 
It  was  some  time  soon  after  Beckford  had  begun 
on  his  extravagant  project  that  Coleridge  dreamt 
of  his  Oriental  palace : 

In  Xanadu  did  Kubla  Khan 

A  stately  pleasure-dome  decree.  . . . 
So  twice  five  miles  of  fertile  ground 
With  walls  and  towers  were  girdled  round: 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  15 

And  here  were  gardens  bright  with  sinuous  rills, 
Where  blossomed  many  an  incense-bearing  tree; 
And  here  were  forests  ancient  as  the  hills, 
Enfolding  sunny  spots  of  greenery. 

The  poet's  dream  was  inspired  by  a  description  in 
Purchas^  Pilgrimage,  but  it  is  likely  that  the  ^ 
rumour  of  the  wild  doings  at  Fonthill  also  en-  ^ 
tered  into  his  vision.  Of  the  character  of  Beck- 
ford's  pleasure-dome,  with  its  intricate  galleries 
and  spacious  halls,  and  innumerable  chambers 
devoted  to  every  refinement  of  luxury,  and  with 
its  heterogeneous  collection  of  rare  treasures, 
I  shall  attempt  to  give  no  description.  The 
dominating  feature  of  the  design  was  a  great 
tower  which  rose  three  hundred  feet  from  the 
ground.  It  was  built  in  such  haste  that  the  wind 
one  day,  catching  a  large  flag  on  the  summit, 
brought  the  whole  flimsy  thing  down  in  ruins. 
Nothing  daunted,  the  owner  ran  up  a  second 
tower  in  its  place,  and  this,  too,  crumbled  to  the, 
earth  in  1825,  after  the  estate  had  been  sold  into 
other  hands.  The  whole  thing  is  like  a  chapter  in 
romanticism  written  in  wood  and  mortar. 

Of  the  life  of  the  master  in  his  magic  palace 
strange  stories  were  soon  current.  About  the 
whole  park  he  raised  a  twelve-foot  wall  of  some 
seven  or  eight  miles  in  length.  His  own  explana- 
tion of  this  work  was  that  he  purposed  to  keep  the 
neighbouring  gentry  from  riding  to  hounds  over 
his  land ;  but  it  scarcely  seems  that  twelve  feet  of 


■1 


i6    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

masonry  was  necessary  for  such  an  end.  The  fact 
is  that  Beckford  had  developed  something  not 
unhke  a  .mania  for  seclusion.  His  biographer 
tries  to  combat  such  a  notion,  and  no  doubt  some 
of  the  stories  of  his  devices  to  keep  the  world 
away  were  exaggerated  or  invented.  Such,  per- 
haps, is  the  anecdote  of  the  stranger  who  got 
within  the  park  and  mistaking  Beckford  for  a 
gardener  asked  to  be  shown  about  the  grounds. 
This  the  owner  is  said  to  have  done,  and  then, 
after  disclosing  his  identity,  and  dining  with  the 
stranger,  retired  and  sent  a  servant  with  the  mes- 
sage: "Mr.  Beckford  ordered  me  to  present  his 
compliments  to  you,  Sir,  and  I  am  to  say  that  as 
you  found  your  way  into  Fonthill  Abbey  without 
assistance,  you  may  find  your  way  out  again  as 
best  you  can;  and  he  hopes  you  will  take  care  to 
avoid  the  bloodhounds  that  are  let  loose  in  the 
gardens  every  night.  I  wish  you  good  evening." 
The  incident  has  been  well  vouched  for,  but 
Beckford  himself  denied  it,  or  at  least  gave  it 
quite  an  innocent  turn,  and  I  am  willing  to  let  it 
pass.  Another  story  of  similar  import,  however, 
comes  to  us  in  his  own  words  and  cannot  be  gain- 
said. The  Duchess  of  Gordon  may  have  been 
a  bold,  inquisitive  creature,  as  duchesses  have 
a  right  to  be,  but  her  reception  at  Fonthill  was 
certainly  not  such  as  duchesses  expect.  Beckford 
relates  the  adventure  to  his  friend  Redding: 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  17 

Fonthill  was  put  in  order  for  her  reception,  with 
everything  I  could  desire  to  receive  her  magnificently 

—  not  only  to  receive  her,  but  to  turn  the  tables  on  her 
for  the  presumption  she  had  that  I  was  to  become  the 
plaything  of  her  purposes.  .  .  .  My  arrangements  being 
made,  I  ordered  my  major-domo  to  say,  on  the  Duchess's 
arrival,  that  it  was  unfortunate  —  everything  being 
arranged  for  her  Grace's  reception,  Mr.  Beckford  had 
shut  himself  up  on  a  sudden,  a  way  he  had  at  times,  and 
that  it  was  more  than  his  place  was  worth  to  disturb 
him,  as  his  master  only  appeared  when  he  pleased,  for- 
bidding interruption,  even  if  the  King  came  to  Fonthill. 
I  had  just  received  a  new  stock  of  books,  and  had  them 
removed  to  the  room  of  which  I  had  taken  possession. 
The  Duchess  conducted  herself  with  great  equanimity, 
and  seemed  much  surprised  and  gratified  at  what  she 
saw,  and  the  mode  of  her  reception  —  just  as  I  desired 
she  should  be.  When  she  got  up  in  the  morning  her  first 
question  was,  "Do  you  think  Mr.  Beckford  will  be 
visible  to-day?"  "I  cannot  inform  your  Grace  —  Mr. 
Beckford's  movements  are  so  very  uncertain  —  it  is 
possible.   Would  your  Grace  take  an  airing  in  the  Park? 

—  a  walk  in  the  gardens?"  Everything  which  Fonthill 
could  supply  was  made  the  most  of,  whetting  her  appe- 
tite to  her  purpose  still  more. 

After  seven  or  eight  days  of  this  treatment  the 
Duchess  departed,  and  Beckford  remarks  that  he 
"never  enjoyed  a  joke  so  much." 

I  see  no  reason  why  we  should  not  accept  the 
common  tradition  of  Beckford's  craze  for  isola-| 
tion,  and  indeed  any  one  who  is  familiar  with; 
human  nature,  and  particularly  human   nature  j  y 
under  the  warping  stress  of  uncontrolled  emo-  \ 
tions,  would  prophesy,  from   the   young  man's  « 


i8    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

outcry  for  sympathy  and  from  his  complaints  of 
the  world's  inability  to  appreciate  him,  that  just 
;  such  a  loveless,  lonely  old  age  would  be  his  end. 
Some  connection  with  society  he  no  doubt  main- 
tained, occasional  visits  were  received;  but  on 
the  whole  the  picture  one  gets  of  the  recluse  in 
his  Palace  of  Art,  surrounded  by  the  spoils  of  the 
world,  is  oppressive  and  morbid.  In  time  Beck- 
ford's  shrinking  fortune  grew  unable  to  stand  the 
strain  put  upon  it,  and  he  was  obliged  in  1822 
to  dispose  of  Fonthill.  The  sale  of  the  collections 
was  one  of  the  much-bruited  events  of  the  day, 
and  Mr.  Melville  quotes  from  an  amusing  skit 
in  the  Times  which  describes  the  throng  of  buy- 
ers and  sightseers: 

He  is  fortunate  who  finds  a  vacant  chair  within 
twenty  miles  of  Fonthill;  the  solitude  of  a  private  apart- 
ment is  a  luxury  which  few  can  hope  for,  . . .  Falstaff 
himself  could  not  take  his  ease  at  this  moment  within  a 
dozen  leagues  of  Fonthill. . . .  The  beds  through  the 
county  are  (literally)  doing  double  duty  —  people  who 
come  in  from  a  distance  during  the  night  must  wait  to 

go  to  bed  until  others  get  up  in  the  morning Not  a 

farmhouse  —  however  humble  —  not  a  cottage  near 
Fonthill,  but  gives  shelter  to  fashion,  to  beauty,  and 
rank;  ostrich  feathers,  which,  by  their  very  waving,  we 
can  trace  back  to  Piccadilly,  are  seen  nodding  at  a  case- 
ment window  over  a  dispopulated  poultry-yard. 

Beckford  now  retired  to  Bath,  where  at  Lans- 
down  he  reared  a  miniature  Fonthill,  with  a  tower 
one  hundred  and  thirty  feet  high,  ending  in  a 


WILLIAM   BECKFORD  19 

cast-iron  model  of  the  Temple  of  Lysicrates  at 
Athens.  At  Bath  he  became  a  notable  figure,  and 
his  eccentricities,  if  nothing  more,  were  the  occa- 
sion of  endless  scandals.  "Surmises  were  current 
about  a  brood  of  dwarfs  that  vegetated  in  an 
apartment  built  over  the  archway  connecting  his 
two  houses;  and  the  vulgar,  rich  and  poor  alike, 
gave  a  sort  of  half-credit  to  cabalistical  mon- 
strosities invoked  in  that  apartment."  Mr.  Mel- 
ville adds  that  the  brood  of  dwarfs  consisted  in 
reality  of  one  poor  waif  whom  Beckford  had 
picked  up  in  Italy.  '"What  do  you  think  of  him, 
eh?  Oh,  he's  a  strange  thing,  is  n't  he?'  his  mas- 
ter said  to  a  visitor  at  Lansdown,  adding  in  an 
unearthly  voice,  in  allusion  to  the  rumours  in  the 
town  below,  '  He  is  a  Giaour,  and  feeds  upon  toad- 
stools!'  "   It  is  n't  just  an  agreeable  jest. 

Beckford  died  in  1844  at  the  age  of  eighty- 
three.   He  was  a  man  of  many  accomplishments 
and  a  vein  of  true  genius,  one  of  the  great  per- 
sonalities of  the  age,  and  in  his  virtues  as  well  as 
his  errors  a  striking  type  of  the  romantic  enthusi- 
asms  that  in   his  early  formative  years  were 
springing  up  all  over  Europe.  As  the  keynote  to 
his  character  Mr.  Melville  quotes  his  saying,  "I  1 
have  never  known  a  moment's  ennui."   It  is  pos- 1 
sibly  true;  if  so  his  salvation  was  due  to  an  inex-/    / 
haustible  fund  of  inherited  health,  for  certainly  the; 
natural  outcome  of  his  mode  of  life  was  solitude,, 
and  self-devouring  thought,  and  infinite  weariness.. 


20    THE   DRIFT   OF  ROMANTICISM 

The  word  romanticism  has  been  employed  so 
variously,  it  has  been  so  bandied  back  and  forth 
by  those  who  admire  and  those  who  condemn, 
and  has  been  associated  with  so  many  practical 
questions,  that  one  feels  to-day  a  certain  hesi- 
tancy in  bringing  it  into  criticism  at  all.  Yet  the 
very  fact  of  its  persistent  use,  even  its  misuse, 
shows  that  it  touches  one  of  the  deep-seated 
traits  of  human  nature,  and  proves  that  those 
who  try  to  explain  it  away  as  unmeaning  are 
depriving  us  of  a  real  and  powerful  instrument 
of  classification.  Where  lie  the  springs  of  this 
movement?  whence  does  the  spirit  of  what  we 
call  romanticism  arise,  and  what  has  been  its 
course?  It  has  run  like  a  river  down  through 
many  ages,  now  contracted  into  a  narrow  cur- 
rent, now  spreading  out  like  a  sea.  It  has  been 
fed  by  countless  contributary  streams,  so  that 
its  origin  may  easily  be  forgotten;  yet  if  we  ex- 
amine closely,  we  shall  see,  I  believe,  that  it  still, 
through  all  the  changes  and  additions  of  time, 
bears  the  mark  that  it  took  from  its  source.  For 
that  source  we  must  go  back  to  the  remote  begin- 
nings of  our  era,  and  look  into  the  obscure  mingling 
of  Oriental  and  Occidental  civilization  which  fol- 
lowed the  invasion  of  Alexander's  army  into  Asia, 
and  which,  under  the  all-merging  sway  of  the  Ro- 
man Empire,  created  a  new  faith  and  a  new  world : 
more  definitely,  we  must  look  into  the  confluence 
oFEastern  religion  and  Western  philosophy. 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  21 

And  here  I  must  beg  for  a  little  indulgence. 
One  may  well  hesitate  in  a  literary  essay  to  deal 
with  such  high-sounding  metaphysical  terms  as 
infinity  and  personality,  yet  I  see  no  way  of  ap- 
proaching the  riddle  before  us  —  and  romanti- 
cism is  the  great  riddle  of  literature  —  without  as 
clear  a  notion  as  we  can  get  of  what  those  ideas 
were  in  the  Oriental  and  the  Occidental  mind, 
and  what  their  coming  together  meant.    As  for 
the  first,  there  is  not  so  much  difficulty.    It  is  a 
commonplace  that  to  the  people  of  the  East  inj 
general  the  emotion  of  the  vast  and  the  vague  I 
was  associated  with  the  divine;  the  mere  escape  I 
from  bounds,  which  was  implied  in  exaggeration,    1 
conveyed  to  them  an  intimation  of  infinity  in  the    1 
absolute  sense  of  complete  independence  of  the^  1 
finite.   And  so  we  see  in  their  religious  poetry  a 
constant  effort  to  overwhelm  the  imagination 
with  enormous  numbers  and  magnitudes,  and  in 
their  idols  an  attempt  to  portray  the  gods  by  dis- 
tortion and  grotesqueness  or  by  some  quality 
that  exceeds  the  human.    On  the  contrary,  the 
people  of  the  West,  at  least  in  so  far  as  Greece 
may  be  said  to  have  been  their  spokesman,  had 
developed  an  inherent  repugnance  to  the  infinite, 
or  the  apeiron,  as  expressed  in  mere  boundless- j 
ness.    To  them  the    divine  was    rather  to  be! 
sought  in  the  qualities  of  restraint  and  limitation' 
and  proportion.    Their  ideal  is  conveyed  in  the 
word  autarkeia,  in  that  self-completeness  which 


22     THE   DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

seeks  to  convey  the  sense  of  pure  infinity,  not 
by  the  suggestion  of  vague  unHmited  forces  for- 
ever striving  for  expansion,  but  by  absolute  con- 
trol at  the  centre.  One  need  only  contrast  Homer 
with  any  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  or  a 
statue  of  Apollo  with  any  of  the  idols  of  the 
Barbarians,  to  learn  how  strongly  and  concretely 
this  difference  in  attitude  towards  the  infinite 
worked  itself  out.  This  law  of  autarkeia,  in  fact, 
this  perception  of  the  veritable  infinite  within 
harmonious  self-completeness,  was  the  great  gift 
of  the  Greeks  to  civilization,  the  greatest  gift 
of  all,  so  unique  in  character,  so  subtle  in  prac- 
tice, so  difficult  to  maintain,  that  to  this  day  he 
who  would  find  the  law  in  its  purity  is  obliged  to 
go  back  to  school  at  Athens  and  there  labori- 
ously learn  it  as  a  lesson.  This  is  the  law  that 
Goethe  discovered  in  the  phrase  of  Pindar, 
epikratein  dynasthai,  tJie  power  of  control,  and  that 
seemed  to  him  to  reveal  the  principle  of  his  na- 
ture and  to  furnish  a  rule  against  the  extrava- 
r  gances  of  romanticism.  We  but  deceive  ourselves 
2  if  we  think  the  modern  world  can  offer  anything 
^   to  take  the  place  of  that  discipline. 

With  this  difference  of  Oriental  and  Occiden- 
tal sentiment  towards  the  infinite  went  a  cor- 
responding difference  in  regard  to  the  notion 
of  personality.  To  the  Western  mind  the  sense 
of  the  Ego,  as  an  active  emotional  entity,  was 
sharply  defined  and  the  last  thing  to  be  given 


WILLIAM   BECKFORD  23 

up.  The  Oriental,  on  the  contrary,  never  at- 
tained  to  a  clear^conception  of  this  entity,  and  in 
his  mind  it  had  a  tendency  always  to  dissolve 


away  into  a  mere  name  for  an  ephemeral  group 
of  sensations.  One  of  the  Pali  books,  the  Milinda- 
pariha,  records  a  number  of  conversations  which 
took  place,  or  were  supposed  to  have  taken  place, 
between  Milinda,  the  Greek  king  Menander, 
who  ruled  over  Alexander's  dominion  of  Bactria, 
and  the  Buddhist  sage,  Nagasena.  One  of  these 
discussions  turns  on  the  existence  of  a  separate 
personality,  and  is  so  pertinent  to  the  matter  in 
question  that  I  may  be  excused  if  I  quote  from 
it  at  some  length : ' 

Then  drew  near  Milinda  the  king  to  where  the 
venerable  Nagasena  was;  and  having  drawn  near,  he 
greeted  the  venerable  Nagasena ;  and  having  passed  the 
compliments  of  friendship  and  civility,  he  sat  down 
respectfully  at  one  side.  And  the  venerable  Nagasena 
returned  the  greeting;  by  which,  verily,  he  won  the 
heart  of  King  Milinda. 

And  Milinda  the  king  spoke  to  the  venerable  Na- 
gasena as  follows: 

"How  is  your  reverence  called?  Bhante,  what  is  your 
name?" 

"Your  majesty,  I  am  called  Nagasena;  my  fellow- 
priests,  your  majesty,  address  me  as  Nagasena:  but 
whether  parents  give  one  the  name  Nagasena,  or  Su- 
rasena,  or  Virasena,  or  Sihasena,  it  is,  nevertheless, 
your  majesty,  but  a  way  of  counting,  a  term,  an  appel- 

»  The  translation  is  by  Henry  Clarke  Warren  in  his  Buddhism  in 
Translations.   Cambridge,  Mass.  1896. 


24    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

lation,  a  convenient  designation,  a  mere  name,  this  Na- 
gasena;  for  there  is  no  Ego  here  to  be  found." 

At  this  the  Greek  cries  out  in  astonishment 
and  begins  to  question  the  sage.  He  forces  Na- 
gasena  to  concede  that  he,  this  Nagasena  who  is 
talking,  is  not  identical  with  the  hair  of  his  head, 
nor  his  nails,  nor  his  teeth,  nor  his  flesh,  nor  any 
other  part  of  his  body;  and  if  there  is  no  separate 
Ego,  where  then  is  the  man  himself?  "  Bhante," 
he  concludes,  "although  I  question  you  very 
closely,  I  fail  to  discover  any  Nagasena.  Verily, 
now,  bhante,  Nagasena  is  a  mere  empty  sound. 
What  Nagasena  is  there  here?  Bhante,  you  speak 
a  falsehood,  a  lie:  there  is  no  Nagasena."  To  this 
argument  the  Hindu  replies  by  a  parallel  reductio 
ad  absurdum : 

"Your  majesty,  you  are  a  delicate  prince,  an  exceed- 
ingly delicate  prince;  and  if,  your  majesty,  you  walk  in 
the  middle  of  the  day  on  hot  sandy  ground,  and  you 
tread  on  rough  grit,  gravel,  and  sand,  your  feet  become 
sore,  your  body  tired,  the  mind  is  oppressed,  and  the 
body-consciousness  suffers.  Pray,  did  you  come  afoot, 
or  riding?" 

"  Bhante,  I  do  not  go  afoot:  I  came  in  a  chariot." 

"Your  majesty,  if  you  came  in  a  chariot,  declare  to 
me  the  chariot.  Pray,  your  majesty,  is  the  pole  the 
chariot?" 

"Nay,  verily,  bhante." 

"Is  the  axle  the  chariot?" 

"Nay,  verily,  bhante." 

"Are  the  wheels  the  chariot?" 

"Nay,  verily,  bhante." 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  25 

"Is  the  chariot-body  the  chariot?" 
"Nay,  verily,  bhante." 

And  so  through  the  banner  staff,  the  yoke,  and 
the  other  parts  of  the  chariot,  with  the  admir- 
able conclusion  that  if  none  of  these  members  is 
the  chariot,  there  is  no  chariot  at  all,  and  the 
king  must  really  have  walked.  In  this  way  he  is 
compelled  to  admit  that  the  term  chariot  is 
merely  a  convenient  designation  for  the  assem- 
bly of  pole,  axle,  wheels,  chariot-body,  and  ban- 
ner staff.  Whereupon  Nagasena  draws  the  les- 
son: 

"Thoroughly  well,  your  majesty,  do  you  understand 
a  chariot.  In  exactly  the  same  way,  your  majesty,  in 
respect  of  me,  Nagasena  is  but  a  way  of  counting,  term, 
appellation,  convenient  designation,  mere  name  jor  the 
hair  of  my  head,  hair  of  my  body, . . .  brain  of  the 
head,  form,  sensation,  perception,  the  predispositions, 
and  consciousness.  ButirL.the.  absolute  sense  there,  is 
no  Ego  here  to  be  found." 

We  need  not  stop  to  analyze  this  argument, 
and  show  how,  by  the  same  logic,  each  member 
of  the  chariot  or  the  man  can  be  analyzed  into 
its  constituent  parts,  and  these  parts  still  fur- 
ther reduced,  until  nothing  is  left  but  absolute 
vacuity, — a  conclusion  which  some  of  the  later 
Buddhists  did  not  hesitate  to  accept.  The  point 
is  the_^  different  attitude  of  the  Greek  and  the 
Oriental  towards  that  mysterious  entity  of  hu- 
man nature  which  we  call  the  Ego  or  the  person- 
alityi 


/ 


26    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

Now  it  was  the  great  work  of  the  first  Chris- 
tian centuries  to  merge  the  Oriental  and  Occi- 
dental conceptions  of  infinity  and  personality 
together  in  a  strange  and  fruitful  union.  Such  an 
amalgamation  might  have  resulted  in  the  reten- 
tion of  the  more  difiicult  term  on  each  side,  in 
the  union,  that  is,  of  the  Greek  notion  of  the  in- 
finite and  the  Oriental  notion  of  impersonality. 
Plato,  in  fact,  and  Plato,  perhaps  alone  of  phil- 
osophers, did  somehow  come  to  effect  a  recon- 
ciliation of  this  sort ;  and  Emerson  shows  true  in- 
sight in  making  this  the  kernel  of  his  doctrine. 
But  in  the  historical  alliance  of  West  and  East 
under  the  Roman  Empire  the  easier  way  was  fol- 
lowed, and  we  can  actually  see  the  Occidental 
sense  of  the  Ego  merging  with  the  Oriental  sense 
of  vastness  and  vagueness,  of  infinity  as  akin  to 
the  mere  escape  from  limitation.  To  that  alli- 
ance, if  to  any  definite  event  of  history,  we  may 
trace  the  birth  of  our  sense  of  an  infinite,  insati- 
able personality,  that  has  brought  so  much  self- 
torment  and  so  much  troubled  beauty  into  the 
religion  and  literature  of  the  modern  world. 
Christianity  was  soon  to  give  a  precise  and  fa- 
mous illustration  of  this  new  birth  in  the  desper- 
ate dispute  of  the  homoousians  and  the  homoi- 
ousians,  who  in  the  fourth  century  almost  rent 
the  Church  in  twain  over  the  question  whether 
the  persons  of  the  Godhead  were  of  the  same  or 
only  of  similar  essence.    Such  a  debate  would 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  27 

have  been  foolishness  to  the  Greek  and  madness 
to  the  early  Hindu. 

No  doubt  in  stating  the  case  thus  succinctly  I 
have  passed  over  many  contributing  causes,  and 
in  especial  I  have  too  much  simplified  the  com- 
plex nature  of  the  Orient  —  certain  traits  of  the 
Semitic  peoples,  for  instance,  are  far  removed 
from  the  Hinduism  which  I  have  taken  as  typ- 
ical of  the  Aryan  East.  Yet  in  essentials  the 
source  of  romanticism  is  to  be  found,  I  think,  in 
such  a  product  of  Oriental  religion  and  Occiden- 
tal philosophy  as  I  have  attempted  to  describe. 
And_the  place  where  this  alliance  was  consum- 
mated is  the  city  on  the  Delta  of  the  Nile  which 
Alexander  created  to  be  the  capital  of  his  vast 
new  empire.  Alexandrianism  has  come  to  be  a 
word  of  reproach,  but  at  least  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  intellectual  activity  of  that  city, 
and  especially  the  activities  that  centred  about 
its  great  library,  make  the  life  of  most  of  our  mod- 
ern universities  seem  in  comparison  barren  and 
insignificant.  How  many  new  literary  forms  and 
philosophical  schools  and  religious  sects  origin- 
ated among  that  people  which  was  drawn  to- 
gether by  avarice  or  ambition  from  every  quar- 
ter of  the  known  world !  And  it  will  be  observed 
that  almost  all  of  these  have  a  distinctly  roman- 
tic_tinge.  Here  was  developed  Neo-Platonism, 
which  is  nothing  more  than  a  conversion  —  a  per- 
version one  might  almost  say,  considering  what 


28    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

confusion   of    ideas   it  wrought   in   philosophy 
through  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  Renaissance 
^♦v  /      —  a  change,  at  least,  of  Plato's  intellectual  mys- 

Ai^  Nw  ticism  into  a  bastard  emotional  mysticism.   The 

pastoral  poem  was  born  in  Alexandria,  or  was 
early  adopted  there,  as  was  the  tale  of  idealized 
love.  There  the  epic  began  to  assume  its  roman- 
tic form,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  work  of  Apollo- 
nius  Rhodius,  one  of  the  masters  of  the  library. 
It  would  be  easy  to  go  through  the  Argonaiitica 
and  select  any  number  of  passages  which  show 
how  the  new  spirit  was  struggling  to  free  itself 
from  the  old  form.  As  an  example  take  the  six 
verses  of  the  third  book  which  depict  the  meet- 
ing of  Jason  and  Medea: 

Silent  awhile  and  dumb  they  stood  together. 
As  on  the  mountain-side  tall  oaks  or  firs 
Deep-rooted  stand,  and  in  the  windless  weather 
Emit  no  sound,  but  when  the  light  wind  stirs 
Break  into  infinite  murmurs,  so  these  twain, 
Moved  by  the  breath  of  Love,  to  speech  grew  fain. 

It  is  not  due  to  my  translation,  but  to  the  sub- 
stance of  the  lines,  that  they  have  more  the  tone 
of  William  Morris  than  of  Homer. 

These  things  are  all  significant  of  the  wide- 
spread revolution  in  sentiment  of  which  Alex- 
andria was  the  chief  centre  and  workshop;  they 
are  straws  on  the  surface,  so  to  speak,  that  tell 
which  way  the  current  is  flowing.  To  learn  what 
was  taking  place  dowilJB  the  depths  one  must 
look  into  the  wild  amalgamation  of  Eastern  and 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  29 

Western  religious  creeds  that  was  sending  out  a 
stream  of  Gnostic  and  Manichean  heresies  and 
threatening  to  overwhelm,  as  indeed  they  largely 
modified,  the  orthodox  faith.  A  good  example 
of  these  feverish  creations  has  come  down  to  us 
in  the  farrago  of  superstition  and  philosophy, 
taught  by  the  Alexandrian  Valentinus  in  the  sec- 
ond century.  Do  not  fear  that  I  shall  attempt  to 
carry  you  through  the  awful  heights  and  depths 
of  that  Gnostic  nightmare  as  it  is  shudderingly 
expounded  by  St.  Irenseus;  a  sentence  or  two  will 
be  sufficient.  To  explain  the  creation  of  the  world 
Valentinus  had  borrowed  and  adapted  an  ela- 
borate system  of  ^ons,  or  mystical  powers,  who 
dwell  aloft  somewhere  in  couples  or  syzygies,  in  a 
state  of  matrimonial  confusion  which  I  have  never 
been  able  to  disentangle.  "The  last  and  youngest 
of  the  duodecad,"  to  quote  St.  Irenaeus  rather 
freely,  "was  the  ^on  called  Sophia  [Wisdom], 
the  daughter  of  Anthropos  and  Ekklesia.  And 
Sophia  fell  into  a  passion  without  the  embrace 

of   her  syzygy  who  is  Theletos  [the  Will] 

Now  this  passion  of  hers  was  a  search  for  the 
Father,  for  she  longed,  as  they  say,  to  compre- 
hend his  greatness."  From  this  passion  of  So- 
phia—elsewhere referred  to  Achamoth,  another 
name  for  Wisdom,  and  identical  with  Enthy- 
mesis,  or  Desire  —  from  this  passion,  then,  of 
Sophia,  or  Achamoth,  without  Will,  springs  the 
world ;  from  her  pain  the  pneumatic  or  spiritual 


30     THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

elements,  from  her  fear  the  psychic,  from  her  ig- 
norance (aporia)  matter.    Into  the  rest  I  will  not 
go.   It  is  like  looking  into  the  abyss  out  of  which 
these  ^ons  were  supposed  to  have  emanated. 
But  in  that  gulf  one  can  see,  like  dim,  shadowy 
portents,  some  of  the  ideas  that  were  germinat- 
ing amidst  the  decay  of  the  old  world.   In  the 
identification  of  the  intellect  with  desire  and  its 
divorce  from  the  will,  in  this  vague  yearning  of 
the  intellect  for  the  infinite  fulness  of  the  Father, 
and  the  birth  of  the  world  from  emotion  (pathos), 
J.  seem  to  see  into  the  real  heart  of  what  after 
many  centuries  was  to  be  called  romanticism  — 
the  infinitely  craving  personality,  the  usurpation 
of  emotion  over  reason,  the  idealization  of  love, 
the  confusion  of  the  sensuous  and  the  spiritual, 
trie  perilous  fascination  that  may  go  with  these 
confusions.   It  is  like  a  dream  of  fever,  beautiful 
and  malign  by  turns;  and,  looking  at  its  wild 
sources,  one  can  understand  why  Goethe  curtly 
called  romanticism  disease  and  classicism  health. 
He  might  have  added  that  disease  is  infectious, 
whereas  health  must  be  acquired  or  preserved  by 
the  effort  of  the  individual. 

Romanticism  was  thus  early  introduced  into 
Christianity,  and  with  Christianity  descended  to 
our  own  days.  But 'there  was  another  aspect 
of  Christian  faith  which  maintained  uncorrupted 
the  true  idea  of  the  infinite  and,  so  long  as  it  en- 
dured, was  able  to  save  the  world  from  falling 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  31 

completely  into  the  sway  of  Alexandrianism.  At 
times,  also,  the  original  impulse  of  romanticism 
may  seem  to  have  been  almost  lost,  when  some 
revival  of  classical  or  pseudo-classical  standards 
swept  over  Europe.  Romanticism,  indeed,  as  we 
know  it  to-day  in  its  full  force,  arose  only  after 
the  purer  Christian  faith  and  the  authority  of  the 
classics  had  given  way  together  to  the  tide  o^f  na- 
turalism  which  set  in  strongly  with  the  eighteenth 
century.  The  exact  cause  and  character  of  this 
naturalistic  movement  can  better  be  explained 
when  we  come  to  deal  with  the  relation  of  science 
to  romanticism  as  exemplified  in  the  philosophy 
of  Huxley.  Meanwhile  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that 
tjistoric  romanticism,  more  strictly  conceived, 
began  with  Blake  and  Rousseau  and  was  devel- 
oped into  a  system  by  the  Schlegels  —  remem- 
bering always  that  the  spirit  at  work  in  these 
men  is  essentially  akin  to  that  spirit  which  ap- 
pears so  remote  and  exotic  in  ancient  Alexandria. 
Germany  and  Egypt  have  taken  us  a  far  jour- 
ney from  Fonthill  and  Bath,  but  in  fact  it  is  only 
by  some  such  historical  survey  as  this  that  we 
can  comprehend  the  meaning  of  the  romantic 
egotism  which  supplies  the  theme  of  the  one  book 
of  Beckford's  —  for  his  volumes  of  travel  are 
now  quite  forgotten  —  that  has  significance  to- 
day. Something  has  already  been  said  about  the 
relation  of  the  celebration  at  Fonthill  on  his 
coming  of  age  with  the  production  of   Vathek. 


32    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

The  old  tradition  of  Beckford's  literary  perform- 
ance is  well  known  —  how,  as  he  told  Redding 
in  1835,  he  had  written  the  story  at  one  sitting, 
that  lasted  for  three  days  and  two  nights,  dur- 
ing which  time  he  never  took  off  his  clothes. 
Unfortunately  Beckford's  correspondence  with 
the  Rev.  Samuel  Henley,  which  has  since  come 
to  light,  quite  shatters  that  heroic  legend.  He 
was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  at  work  on  the  manu- 
script at  least  for  a  number  of  months,  and  was 
tinkering  at  it  at  intervals  for  about  five  years. 
Mr.  Melville  undertakes  to  reconcile  Beckford's 
statement  with  the  facts  by  supposing  he  had  in 
mind,  when  he  was  talking  with  Redding,  not  the 
whole  book  of  Vathek  as  we  have  it,  but  merely  one 
of  the  episodes  designed  for  it  but  never  printed. 
He  wrote  the  story  in  French,  and  to  his  friend 
Henley,  a  scholar  of  considerable  Oriental  attain- 
ments, was  entrusted  the  task  of  furnishing  notes 
and  of  making  an  English  translation.  Probably 
out  of  impatience  over  Beckford's  dilatoriness, 
Henley  put  out  an  edition  of  his  version  in  1786, 
with  a  prefatory  note  stating  that  it  was  trans- 
lated from  the  Arabic.  Beckford  was  naturally 
incensed  at  this  treachery,  and  immediately,  in 
1787,  published  the  original  French  with  a  reply 
to  Henley's  misrepresentation.  We  have  thus  the 
curious  fact  that  one  of  the  classics  of  our  litera- 
ture was  composed  in  a  foreign  tongue,  but  the 
correspondence  between  Henley  and  Beckford 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  33 

shows  that  the  latter  passed  judgement  on  the 
EngHsh  and  virtually  stamped  it  as  his  own. 

I  suspect  that  Vathek  is  little  read  to-day,  and 
indeed  a  good  deal  of  its  extravagant  fancy  and 
grotesque  humour  rings  rather  flat  after  the  lapse 
of  years.  But  the  book  was  popular  in  its  time, 
and  is  still  one  of  the  main  documents  to  any  one 
who  wishes  to  study  the  sources  of  the  romantic 
movement.  Its  theme  is  the  insatiable  craving  for 
experience  and  the  self-torturing  egotism,  which 
were  beginning  to  run  like  wild-fire  through  the 
literature  of  Europe,  and  which  reached  their 
consummation  in  Faust.  Instead  of  the  medie- 
val setting  of  Goethe's  poem,  Beckford's  hero  is 
an  Eastern  prince  at  whose  feet  lie  all  the  pleas- 
ures and  powers  of  the  world.  Not  satisfied  with 
the  magnificence  of  his  predecessors,  he  adds  to 
his  palace  five  wings  in  which,  like  a  Des  Essein- 
tes  of  the  Orient,  he  can  indulge  separately  in 
the  quintessential  luxury  of  the  five  senses.  His 
thirst  for  knowledge  is  equal  to  his  appetite  for 
pleasure,  "for  he  wished  to  know  everything, 
even  sciences  that  did  not  exist."  His  power  was 
greater  than  his  knowledge;  "when  he  was  an- 
gry one  of  his  eyes  became  so  terrible,  that  no  per- 
son could  bear  to  behold  it,  and  the  wretch  upon 
whom  it  was  fixed  instantly  fell  backward,  and 
sometimes  expired."  Only  one  thing  .tli£-CaIiDli 
cannot  command  in  his  earthly  paradise  ::^conr- 
_J;ent;  the  stars  ab^yfi  his  head,  ^s  he  stands  on  his 


34    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

tower  looking  down  contemptuously  on  man- 
kind, are  an  irritation  to  his  desires  and  a  hu- 
miliation to  his  pride.  Then  enters  the  tempter, 
in  the  form  of  a  hideous  Giaour,  who  in  return 
for  a  monstrous  crime  offers  him  the  possession 
of  the  palace  of  subterranean  fire  where  reposes 
Soliman  Ben  Daoud,  surrounded  by  the  talis- 
mans that  control  the  world.  For  a  space  the 
story  is  lost  in  grotesque  adventures;  but  at  the 
end,  as  Vathek  and  the  Princess  Nouronihar  ap- 
proach their  goal,  the  imagination  of  the  author 
kindles  and  the  sense  of  foreboding  deepens  and 
intensifies  step  by  step,  until  in  the  great  Hall  of 
Eblis  (for  to  this  the  promises  of  the  Giaour  have 
brought  them),  at  the  sight  of  the  vast  unrest- 
ing multitude  who  roam  ceaselessly  hither  and 
thither  in  furious  agony  or  in  rapt  absorption, 
heedless  of  everything  about  them  and  forever 
avoiding  one  another,  each  with  his  right  hand 
pressed  upon  his  heart  —  the  feeling  rises  to  real 
terror  and  sublimity.  At  last  the  trembling  pair 
are  led  by  the  Giaour  to  the  great  Soliman,  seated 
aloft  on  a  throne,  yet,  like  the  others,  holding  his 
hand  pressed  upon  his  heart,  and  listening  in- 
tently to  the  sullen  roar  of  a  vast  cataract,  which 
is  the  only  sound  that  intrudes  on  the  univer- 
sal silence.  He  tells  them  of  his  doom,  and  con- 
cludes : 

"In  consideration  of  the  piety  of  my  eady  youth,  my 
woes  shall  come  to  an  end  when  this  cataract  shall  for 


WILLIAM    BECKFORD  35 

ever  cease  to  flow;  till  then  I  am  in  torments,  ineffable 
torments!  an  unrelenting  fire  prej's  on  my  heart." 

Having  uttered  this  exclamation  Soliman  raised  his 
hands  towards  Heaven,  in  token  of  supplication,  and 
the  Caliph  discerned  through  his  bosom,  which  was 
transparent  as  crystal,  his  heart  enveloped  in  flames. 
At  a  sight  so  full  of  horror  Nouronihar  fell  back,  like  one 
petrified,  into  the  arms  of  Vathek,  who  cried  out  with  a 
convulsive  sob: 

"O  Giaour!  whither  hast  thou  brought  us?  Allow  us 
to  depart,  and  I  will  relinquish  all  thou  hast  promised. 
O  Mahomet!  remains  there  no  more  mercy?" 

"None!  none!"  replied  the  malicious  Dive.  "Know, 
miserable  prince!  thou  art  now  in  the  abode  of  ven- 
geance and  despair;  thy  heart  also  will  be  kindled,  like 
those  of  the  other  votaries  of  Eblis.  A  few  days  are  al- 
lotted thee  previous  to  this  fatal  period;  employ  them 
as  thou  wilt;  recline  on  these  heaps  of  gold;  command 
the  Infernal  Potentates;  range  at  thy  pleasure  through 
these  immense  subterranean  domains;  no  barrier  shall 
be  shut  against  thee;  as  for  me,  I  have  fulfilled  my  mis- 
sion; I  now  leave  thee  to  thyself."  At  these  words  he 
vanished. 

The  device  of  the  burning  heart  Beckford  bor- 
rowed from  a  French  writer  now  forgotten,  but 
he  has  more  than  made  it  his  own.  Goethe,  at 
the  conclusion  of  his  Faust,  could  think  of  no  bet- 
ter redemption  for  his  hero  than  to  present  him 
in  the  altruistic  act  of  reclaiming  some  waste 
land.  In  thus  attempting  to  cancel  egotism  with 
sympathy,  Goethe  showed  that,  despite  the  ef- 
forts of  a  lifetime  to  free  himself  from  the  thrall  of 
romanticism,  he  still  at  heart  remained  in  bond- 


36    THE   DRIFT  OF  ROMANTICISM 

age  to  the  old  error.  It  would  be  folly  to  com- 
pare Vathek  with  Faust  as  a  work  either  of  art  or 
of  wisdom ;  the  genius  of  Beckford  was  fitful  and 
seldom  under  control;  he  was  no  philosopher  or 
seer;  but  it  was  given  him  once  to  symbolize  a 
great  and  everlasting  truth  better  than  Goethe 
or  any  other  man  of  his  age.  Romanticism  is  a 
highly  complex  movement,  and  has  contributed 
largely  to  the  world's  sum  of  beauty  and  sublim- 
ity. It  has  been  defined  as  the  sense  of  strange- 
ness and  wonder  in  things,  and  such  a  definition 
tells  at  least  half  the  story.  But  strangeness  and 
wonder  may  be  qualities  of  all  great  literature :  in 
so  far  as  they  are  peculiar  to  romanticism  and 
distinguish  it  from  the  universal  mode  which  we 
call  classic,  they  will  be  found  to  proceed  from, 
or  verge  towards,  thatynorbid  egotism  which  is 
born  of  the  union  of  an  intensely  felt  personality, 
jvith  the  notion  of  infinity  as  an  esca_pe  from  lim- 
itationa,  If  we  look  below  the  surface  of  things, 
arid  penetrate  through  many  illusions,  we  shall 
perceive  in  Beckford's  vision  of  the  restless 
throng,  moving  ever  with  hand  pressed  upon 
flaming  heart,  the  essential  type  and  image  of 
the  romantic  life  and  literature. 


CARDINAL    NEWMAN 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN 

Almost  inevitably  the  jomantic  revival  of  re- 
ligion in  England  took  its  rise  at  Oxford.  From 
a  remote  age  that  university  had  stood  forth 
again  and  again  in  a  protest  of  the  heart  and  the 
imagination  against  the  rationalizing  and  utilitar- 
ian tendencies  of  the  British  character.  As  far 
back  as  the  early  years  of  the  fourteenth  century 
Richard  Rolle  of  Hampole,  who  has  been  called 
"the  true  father  of  English  Hterature,"  as  a  stu- 
dent at  Oxford  started  a  revolt  against  the  pre- 
vailing scholasticism  of  Duns  Scotus ;  and  his  re- 
form is  not  without  curious  analogies  with  the 
movement  that  was  to  emanate  from  Oxford 
five  centuries  later.  In  place  of  the  nominalism 
of  Duns  Scotus,  which  contains  the  germs  of  the 
Protestant  appeal  to  the  reason  of  the  individual, 
Richard  proclaimed  the  mystical  principle  of 
love  —  universalitas  mundialis  creaturcB  diligere 
diligique  cupit  —  and  his  writings  in  English  and 
Latin  are  one  long  exhortation  to  the  love  of  God 
and  to  the  contemplative  life  which  finds  its 
mystical  consummation  in  that  divine  emotion. 

He  was  the  father  of  a  long  line  of  writers  and 
preachers  who  handed  down  the  tradition  of  the 
contemplative  life  from  his  own  day  to  New- 
man's, even  to  ours  —  a  slender  band  of  other- 


40    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

worldly  men  who  from  time  to  time  seem  merged 
and  forgotten  in  the  great,  ruthless,  practical 
population  of  England,  and  of  whom  our  histo- 
ries of  literature  speak  far  too  little.  In  this  he 
was  a  normal  representative  of  one  important  and 
wholesome  aspect  of  human  nature;  but  there 
was  another  side  to  him  also,  that  which  may 
be  called  the  romantic  twist  to  the  emotions 
and  is  by  no  means  a  necessary  concomitant  of 
contemplation.  In  his  glorification  of  the  emo- 
tions and  of  the  contemplative  love  of  God  there 
was  always  a  lurking  element  of  self -exaltation, 
and  his  praises  of  the  secluded  life  were  filled 
with  outbursts  of  indignation  against  a  society 
which  was  only  too  willing  to  take  him  at  his 
I  word  and  leave  him  to  his  seclusion.  He  is  an 
\^ early  type  of  the  soul  that  magnifies  love  and  sym- 
pathy and  at  the  same  time  clamours  against  its 
isolation  in  the  midst  of  mankind.  He  is  con- 
sumed with  ennui  and  the  feeling  of  futility;  he 
cries  out  to  heaven  to  remove  him  from  a  com- 
munity of  fools  and  worldlings  among  whom  he 
languished  in  unregarded  uselessness.  Like  an- 
other Carlyle  he  is  afflicted  by  the  very  noises  of 
society  —  penales  sunt  mihi  vociferantes  et  crucior 
quasi  per  incommodum  guando  clamor  clangentium 
me  tangit. 

This  long  tradition,  in  its  aspects  both  of 
strength  and  of  weakness,  must  not  be  forgotten 
when  we  consider  the  ground  out  of  which  sprang 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  41 

the  Oxford  Movement  of  the  nineteenth  century; 
that  movement  was  a  part  of  the  great  romantic 
flood  that  swept  over  Europe,  and  owed  more  to 
Germany  than  the  men  of  Oxford  were  aware  of, 
but  it  was  still  primarily  English.  The  immedi- 
ate impulse  came  as  a  reaction  against  the  all- 
invading  Liberal  and  Erastian  notions  of  the  day, 
and  as  an  attempt  to  find  a  substitute  within  the 
Church  of  England  for  the  fervour  of  Wesleyan- 
ism,  and  for  the  Evangelicalism  which  threatened 
to  convert  the  Church  into  a  weak  imitation  of 
Wesley's  congregation.  The  little  group  of  Fel- 
lows of  Oriel  College  saw  that  the  enthusiasm  of 
this  Evangelical  revival  had  no  tenacious  anchor 
in  that  form  of  the  religious  imagination,  that 
still-brooding  celestial  love,  which  is  almost  in- 
separable from  a  humble  reverence  for  tradition; 
that  it  was  a  kind  of  emotional  effervescence  from 
a  utilitarian  rationalism  and  must  in  the  end 
serve  only  to  strengthen  the  sway  of  irreligion. 
" '  Unstable  as  water,  it  cannot  excel, ' "  Newman 
was  to  write  of  this  kind  of  Protestantism.  "  It 
is  but  the  inchoate  state  or  stage  of  a  doctrine, 
and  its  final  resolution  is  in  Rationalism.  This  it 
has  ever  shown  when  suffered  to  work  itself  out 
without  interruption."  Newman  himself  reck- 
oned the  active  beginning  of  the  propaganda  as 
coincident  with  Keble's  sermon  of  July  14,  1833, 
against  the  liberalizing  attacks  on  the  Church, 
and  the  first  of  the  Tracts  that  were  to  create 


42     THE    DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

such  a  furor  was  dated  September  9  of  the  same 
year.  Keble  himself,  a  Fellow  of  Oriel,  though 
he  may  be  said  to  have  fired  the  first  gun  in  the 
warfare,  was  not  one  of  the  militant  saints,  and 
the  brunt  of  the  battle  he  soon  let  fall  on  other 
shoulders. 

Keble  found  his  peace  in  the  quiet  ministra- 
tions of  his  parish  at  Hursley.  As  did  Newman, 
he  looked  upon  his  pupil  at  Oriel,  Richard  Hur- 
rell  Froude,  brother  of  the  historian,  as  the  real 
leader  of  the  movement  —  or  rather  instigator, 
for  Froude  was  early  carried  out  of  active  life 
by  ill-health  and  died  of  consumption  in  1836, 
when  still  a  young  man.  In  the  first  shock  of 
his  loss,  it  was  the  brilliance  of  his  intellect  that 
seemed  to  stand  out  as  his  preeminent  trait.  "I 
never,  on  the  whole,  fell  in  with  so  gifted  a  per- 
son," Newman  wrote  in  a  letter  the  day  after 
hearing  of  his  friend's  death.  "In  variety  and 
perfection  of  gifts  I  think  he  far  exceeded  even 
Keble.  For  myself,  I  cannot  describe  what  I  owe 
to  him  as  regards  the  intellectual  principles  of 
religion  and  morals."  Brilliant  he  no  doubt  was, 
yet,  as  one  reads  the  many  testimonies  of  his 
character  gathered  together  in  Miss  Guiney's  bio- 
graphy, it  is  not  so  much  his  intellect  as  his  au- 
dacity that  impresses  one.  He  would  have  been 
the  Rupert  of  the  war  had  he  lived,  dashing  into 
the  ranks  of  the  enemy  without  fear  and  without 
too  much  circumspection.  When  others  doubted, 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  43 

he  was  sure ;  and  the  most  vivid  picture  we  have 
of  him  shows  him  pacing  Trinity  Gardens  with  his 
hand  on  the  shoulder  of  a  friend,  and  saying 
blithely,  "Isaac,  we  must  make  a  Row  in  the 
world ! "  Dean  Church  speaks  of  his  "fiery  impet- 
uosity and  the  frank  daring  of  his  disrespectful 
vocabulary ' ' ;  and  James  Mozley  describes  him  as 
hating  "the  present  state  of  things  so  excessively 
that  any  change  would  be  a  relief  to  him."  His 
own  mother  wrote  of  him  in  childhood  that  he 
was  "exceedingly  impatient  under  vexatious  cir- 
cumstances ;  very  much  disposed  to  find  his  own 
amusement  in  teasing  and  vexing  others;  and 
almost  entirely  incorrigible  when  it  was  necessary 
to  reprove  him."  No,  he  was  not  the  intellect  of 
the  movement,  and  even  Newman  later  admits 
in  the  Apologia  that"  he  had  no  turn  for  theology  " 
and  that  "his  power  of  entering  into  the  minds 
of  others  was  not  equal  to  his  other  gifts."  Had 
he  lived,  he  would  not  have  added  to  the  gravity 
and  lasting  influence  of  the  movement,  I  think; 
but  by  his  reckless  indifference  to  the  opinion 
of  the  world  he  might  have  cut  short  the  long 
hesitation  of  Newman  between  the  Church  of 
England  and  Rome.  He  would  have  brought 
more  acrimony  into  the  debate,  but  would  have 
deprived  it  also  of  much  of  its  profounder  sig- 
nificance. 

There  were  other  men,  important  in  their  day, 
who  fought  by  the  side  of  Keble  and  Froude  and 


44    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

Newman,  following  them  at  various  distances. 
Pusey  especially  should  not  be  overlooked,  whose 
high  Tory  connections  brought  a  certain  stand- 
ing to  the  group  of  rebels  among  the  Philistines 
of  the  land.  One  surmises  that  his  social  posi- 
tion, quite  as  much  as  his  scholarship,  caused 
the  name  Puseyism  to  be  attached  to  the  move- 
ment in  its  earlier  phases.  Pusey  was  a  laborious 
student  and  plunged  deep  into  the  German  liter- 
*  ature  of  the  day  in  order  to  combat  its  infidel 
tendencies  —  went  so  deep  that  he  never  quite 
emerged  to  the  surface.  In  the  long  run  New- 
man became  the  leader  and  representative  of  the 
group,  and  to-day  his  commanding  personality 
and  the  long  agony  of  his  conversion  alone  retain 
significance  in  the  common  memory,  while  the 
other  men  are  but  names  of  history.  Such  is  the 
prerogative  of  genius  that  the  whole  Oxford 
Movement  seems  to  us  now  but  the  personal  con- 
cern of  a  single  soul. 

John  Henry  Newman  was  born  in  1801.  He 
was,  as  were  also  by  a  curious  coincidence  Man- 
/  ning  and  Ward,  the  son  of  a  London  banker.  In 
y  childhood  he  read  much  in  the  Arabian  Nights 
and  was  filled  with  odd,  solitary  imaginings.  At 
the  age  of  fifteen  he  underwent  some  kind  of  con- 
version, the  nature  of  which  he  has  not  made  per- 
fectly clear.  It  was,  however,  attended  with  a 
dedication  of  himself  to  missionary  or  other  re- 
ligious work,  and  with  the  conviction  that  he 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  45 

should  remain  a  celibate  through  life.  More  im- 
portant was  the  strengthening  within  him  of  the 
feeling,  never  after  that  to  leave  him,  which 
would  appear  to  be  the  guiding  sense  of  all  deeply 
religious  minds  — j^iejeeling  that  material  phe-  1 
nomena  are  unreal  and  that  the  only  realities  are  / 
God  and  the  human  soul.  "From  a  boy,"  he/ 
writes  in  the  midst  of  his  later  struggle,  "I  had 
been  led  to  consider  that  my  Maker  and  I, 
His  creature,  were  the  two  beings,  luminously 
such,  in  rerum  natura.''  From  boyhood,  too,  he 
could  not  look  upon  the  natural  world  without  a 
strange  sense  of  baffled  illusion.  Of  all  his  letters 
that  I  have  read,  none,  perhaps,  lets  us  closer  to 
the  secret  of  his  heart  than  the  one  written  to  his 
sister  in  the  spring  of  1828,  after  returning  to  Ox- 
ford from  a  ride  to  Cuddesdon: 

The  country,  too,  is  beautiful;  the  fresh  leaves,  the 
scents,  the  varied  landscape.  Yet  I  never  felt  so  in- 
tensely the  transitory  nature  of  this  world  as  when  most 
delighted  with  these  country  scenes.  And  in  riding  out 
to-day  I  have  been  impressed  more  powerfully  than  be- 
fore I  had  an  idea  was  possible  with  the  two  lines: 

"Chanting  with  a  solemn  voice 
Minds  us  of  our  better  choice." 

I  could  hardly  believe  the  lines  were  not  my  own,  and 
Keble  had  not  taken  them  from  me.  I  wish  it  were  pos- 
sible for  words  to  put  down  those  indefinite,  vague,  and 
withal  subtle  feelings  which  quite  pierce  the  soul  and 
make  it  sick. . . .  What  a  veil  and  curtain  this  world  of 
sense  is!  beautiful,  but  still  a  veil. 


46    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

For  one  who  can  really  understand  the  mean- 
ing of  that  letter  I  suspect  the  dark  places  of 
Newman's  career  will  have  Httle  difficulty.  He 
in  whom  these  words  awaken  no  response  had 
better  lay  down  his  Newman  and  take  up  his 
Darwin;  he  will  find  nothing  to  concern  him  in 
the  experience  of  a  soul  to  whom,  as  Newman 
wrote  in  another  letter,  "time  is  nothing  except 
as  the  seed  of  eternity." 

In  1817  he  went  up  to  Oxford,  entering  at 
Trinity  College.  In  1822  he  was  elected  a  Fel- 
low of  Oriel,  where  religion  was  the  one  serious 
topic  of  the  Common  Room.  Two  years  later  he 
was  ordained,  and  in  1828,  becoming  Vicar  of 
St.  Mary's,  he  began  those  sermons  whose  re- 
strained eloquence  held  so  many  of  the  young 
men  of  Oxford  spellbound.  What  with  a  less  in- 
trospective mind  would  have  been  an  important 
event  was  a  tour  of  the  Mediterranean  taken 
with  Hurrell  Froude  and  his  father.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  one  cannot  see  from  his  letters  that  the 
view  of  so  many  great  and  memorable  scenes 
of  history  had  much  meaning  for  him.  From 
Rome  he  wrote  that  he  had  "alas,  experienced 
none  of  that  largeness  and  expansion  of  mind  " 
which  he  had  been  told  he  "should  get  from  trav- 
elling." All  his  interest  was  in  the  journeying  of 
his  own  soul,  which  before  this  had  started  on  the 
long  and  obscure  road  that  was  to  lead  it  to  its 
spiritual  Rome.  The  actual  Rome  of  the  Pope 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  47 

seems  to  have  repelled  and  attracted  him  at  the 
same  time.  Much  that  he  saw  there  appeared  to 
him  "polytheistic,  degrading,  idolatrous";  but 
the  longing  in  him  was  nevertheless  increased 
for  reunion  with  the  ancient  mother.  "Oh,  that 
Rome  were  not  Rome!"  he  exclaims;  "but  I 
seem  to  see  as  clear  as  day  that  a  union  with  her 
js  impossible.  She  is  the  cruel  Church  asking  of 
us  impossibilities,  excommunicating  us  for  dis- 
obedience, and  now  watching  and  exulting  over 
our  approaching  overthrow."  At  bottom  one 
suspects  that  this  spectacle  of  the  visible  centre 
of  Catholicism  fixed  more  deeply  in  his  heart  the 
desiderium  RonicB,  as  Erasmus  felt  and  called  it, 
the  haunting  memory,  the  "perfume  of  Rome," 
which  was  really  but  another  form  of  the  common 
romantic  homesickness  for  some  place  of  ideal 
peace  and  loveliness  where  the  self-tortured  soul 
may  find  sympathy  and  healing  for  the  coldness 
of  this  world. 

In  literature  the  chief  result  of  the  journey  was 
the  series  of  short  poems,  issued  in  1834  in  the 
Lyra  Apostolica.  Those  particularly  which  were 
written  after  his  almost  fatal  illness  in  Sicily  are 
filled  with  a  deep  emotional  realization  of  the 
other  world,  and  belong  with  the  best  of  Eng- 
land's religious  poetry.  The  stanzas  beginning 
"Lead,  Kindly  Light,"  composed  on  shipboard 
while  sailing  from  Sicily  to  Marseilles,  express 
with  lyric  poignancy  the  sense  of  an  ever-pre- 


48    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

sent  divine  Providence,  but  they  have  become 
too  familiar  for  quotation.  Another  poem,  writ- 
ten only  a  few  days  later  at  Marseilles,  although 
the  last  twelve  lines  were  added  after  the  death 
of  Froude,  shows  how  close  the  world  of  spirits 
seemed  to  Newman's  heart,  very  close  yet  sep- 
arated by  the  strangeness  of  this  earthly  veil : 

Do  not  their  souls,  who  'neath  the  Altar  wait 
t,^  Until  their  second  birth, 
j  The  gift  of  patience  need,  as  separate 

From  their  first  friends  of  earth? 
Not  that  earth's  blessings  are  not  all  outshone 

By  Eden's  Angel  flame, 
But  that  earth  knows  not  yet,  the  Dead  has  won 

That  crown,  which  was  his  aim. 
For  when  he  left  it,  't  was  a  twilight  scene 

About  his  silent  bier, 
A  breathless  struggle,  faith  and  sight  between, 

And  Hope  and  sacred  Fear. 
Fear  startled  at  his  pains  and  dreary  end, 

Hope  raised  her  chalice  high. 
And  the  twin-sisters  still  his  shade  attend, 

View'd  in  the  mourner's  eye. 
So  day  by  day  for  him  from  earth  ascends, 

As  steam  in  summer-even, 
The  speechless  intercession  of  his  friends, 

Toward  the  azure  heaven. 
Ah !  dearest,  with  a  word  he  could  dispel 

All  questioning,  and  raise 
Our  hearts  to  rapture,  whispering  all  was  well 

And  turning  prayer  to  praise. 
And  other  secrets  too  he  could  declare. 

By  patterns  all  divine. 
His  earthly  creed  retouching  here  and  there, 

And  deepening  every  line. 
Dearest !  he  longs  to  speak,  as  I  to  know. 

And  yet  we  both  refrain: 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  49 

It  were  not  good:  a  little  doubt  below, 
And  all  will  soon  be  plain. 

From  these  personal  lines  the  mind  reverts  to  one 
of  the  greatest  of  Newman's  Parochial  Sermons, 
that  on  The  Invisible  World,  in  which,  from  in- 
ability to  understand  the  lower  world  of  animals 
so  real  to  our  physical  senses,  the  preacher  argues 
a  like  reality  for  the  higher  world  known  to  our 
spiritual  senses: 

And  yet  in  spite  of  this  universal  world  which  we  see, 
there  is  another  world,  quite  as  far-spreading,  quite  as 
close  to  us,  and  more  wonderful;  another  world  all 
around  us,  though  we  see  it  not,  and  more  wonderful 
than  the  world  we  see,  for  this  reason  if  for  no  other,  that 
we  do  not  see  it.  All  around  us  are  numberless  objects, 
coming  and  going,  watching,  working,  or  waiting,  which 
we  see  not:  this  is  that  other  world,  which  the  eyes 
reach  not  unto,  but  faith  only.  . . . 

And  in  that  other  world  are  the  souls  also  of  the  dead. 
They  too,  when  they  depart  hence,  do  not  cease  to  exist, 
but  they  retire  from  this  visible  scene  of  things;  or,  in 
other  words,  they  cease  to  act  towards  us  and  before  us 
through  our  senses. . . .  They  remain,  but  without  the 
iisual  means  of  approach  towards  us,  and  correspond- 
ence with  us. 

It  may  not  be  irrelevant  to  add  that  in  the  words 
of  the  poem,  And  yet  we  both  refrain  :  It  were  not 
good,  one  may  come  close  to  the  distinction  be- 
tween a  vivid  faith  and  the  pseudo-science  of  psy- 
chical research,  faith  resting  in  profound  realiza- 
tion of  the  different  kinds  of  knowledge,  pseudo- 
science  attempting  to  confuse  them  together. 


50    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

Meanwhile  the  religious  situation  had  become 
more  acute  at  Oxford,  and  on  returning  thither 
Newman  plunged  into  the  thick  of  the  contro- 
versy.  The  famous  series  of  Tracts  for  the  Times 
was  begun.   The  most  important  of  these,  Num- 
ber 90,  was  written  by  Newman,  and  touches 
the  core  of  the  argument.   Against  the  evangeliz- 
ing and  liberalizing  tendency  of  religion  at  that 
(time,  Newman  here  proclaimed  that  the  Church 
jof   England  was  essentially   Catholic  and  had 
never  accepted  the  reformed  dogmas  of  the  six- 
teenth  century.    He  attempted   to   prove,   not 
without  some  sophistry  one  is  forced  to  admit, 
that  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  were  really  not  in- 
tended to  favour  the  Reformation,  but  were  a 
loose  compromise  of  contending  views,  and  might 
best  be  interpreted  as  a  summary  of  the  old  faith 
with  only  such  verbal  concessions  to  the  radical 
party  as  the  times  made  necessary.   This  was  in 
1841,  and  within  a  few  months  twelve  thousand 
five  hundred  copies  of  the  Tract  had  been  sold. 
The   storm   that   broke   upon   the   Tractarians 
showed  what  the  common  sense  of  England  per- 
ceived as  the  logical  conclusion  of  their  position. 
It  saw  clearly  that  they  were  tending,  not  to- 
wards a  vague  Anglican  Catholicism  as  the  Trac- 
tarians fondly  believed  of  themselves,  but  to- 
wards the  Catholicism  of  Rome ;  and  to  know  all 
that  this  meant  to  England  one  must  take  into 
consideration  the  long  history  of  the  land,  the 


CARDINAL    NEWMAN  51 

plotting  and  counterplotting  that  followed  the 
Reformation  of  Henry  VIII  and  Elizabeth,  the 
horrors  of  the  Gunpowder  Plot  as  it  was  con- 
ceived in  the  popular  mind,  the  treacheries  of 
Charles  II,  and  the  death  struggle  with  the  Stu- 
art party  of  the  eighteenth  century.  And  essen- 
tially the  common  sense  of  England  was  right. 
The  life  of  Newman  for  the  next  four  years  was  a 
hidden  tragedy  in  which  the  protagonists  were 
his  loyalty  to  the  national  tradition  and  his  logi- 
cal integrity  of  mind;  and  in  the  end  logic  with 
him  won  the  day.  In  1843  he  resigned  the  Vicar- 
age of  St.  Mary's,  feehng  that  he  could  no  longer 
with  honesty  preach  in  an  Anglican  pulpit.  With 
a  band  of  sympathetic  comrades  he  retired  to  Lit- 
tlemore,  a  suburb  of  Oxford,  where  he  had  built 
a  Chapel  of  Ease  on  St.  Mary's  and  converted 
a  row  of  cottages  into  a  kind  of  Protestant  mon- 
astery. Here  he  set  himself  to  the  task  of  clari- 
fying his  own  mind  by  analyzing  the  office  of  the 
church  in  developing,  under  divine  guidance,  the 
depositum  fidei  which  was  originally  entrusted  to 
it  in  the  Scriptures.  In  this  attempt  to  reconcile 
the_dia.riges_of  history  with  the  everlasting  im- 
mutability of  truth,  he  began  with  this  one  as- 
sumption as  certain:  "Whatever  history  teaches, 
whatever  it  omits,  whatever  it  says  and  unsays, 
at  least  the  Christianity  of  history  is  not  Protest- 
antism. .  .  .  To  be  deep  in  history  is  to  cease  to 
be  a  Protestant."   Meanwhile  the  drama  of  his 


52     THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

soul  was  worked  out  so  quietly  and  with  so  little 
consultation  with  the  world  that  the  final  step, 
however  it  had  been  seen  in  theory,  came  as  a 
shock  even  to  his  friends.  Wilfrid  Ward,  in  his 
Life  of  Cardinal  Wiseman,  gives  a  vivid  picture 
of  Newman  in  these  days: 

Those  who  still  survive  describe  him  as  standing  up- 
right at  a  high  desk,  writing  for  hours  together  —  to- 
wards the  end  for  fourteen  hours  in  the  day  —  at  his 
book  [the  Essay  on  the  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine]. 
The  younger  men  looked  in  awe  at  their  inscrutable 
Rector,  who  never  spoke  (unless  in  private  to  Ambrose 
St.  John)  of  what  was  in  his  thoughts,  and  never  gave 
them  an  indication  that  he  expected  them  to  take  the 
great  step.  Day  by  day  he  seemed  to  grow  paler,  and 
taller,  and  thinner  —  at  last  almost  transparent  —  as 
he  stood  in  the  light  of  the  sun  and  worked  at  his  task. 

At  this  time  Cardinal  Wiseman,  desiring  to 
know  how  Newman  stood  towards  the  Roman 
Church,  sent  a  convert,  Mr.  Bernard  Smith,  who 
had  been  Newman's  curate  at  Littlemore,  to 
sound  him.  There  is  a  touch  of  humour  in  the 
only  indication  that  Newman  gave  of  his  posi- 
tion. At  dinner-time  he  appeared  and  stood  for 
a  moment  conspicuously  in  the  middle  of  the 
room.  He  wore  grey  trousers,  and  Mr.  Smith,  who 
was  acquainted  with  Newman's  strict  adherence 
to  the  clerical  costume,  understood  that  he  no 
longer  regarded  himself  as  a  priest  of  the  Church. 
Shortly  after  this,  Newman  invited  the  Passion- 
ist  Father  Dominic,  an  Italian,  to  Littlemore, 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  53 

and  on  the  8th  of  October,  1845,  he  received  con- 
ditional baptism.  On  the  first  day  of  the  month 
following  he  was  formally  confirmed  at  Oscott 
by  Cardinal  Wiseman,  and  the  great  conversion 
was  accomplished.  But  first,  to  the  unfinished 
manuscript  of  his  Essay  on  Development  lying  on 
his  desk  at  Littlemore  he  had  added  this  para- 
graph, of  which  it  has  been  said  that  it  "will  be 
remembered  as  long  as  the  English  language  en- 
dures": 

Such  were  the  thoughts  concerning  the  "Blessed  Vis- 
ion of  Peace,"  of  one  whose  long-continued  petition  had 
been  that  the  Most  Merciful  would  not  despise  the  work 
of  His  own  Hands,  nor  leave  him  to  himself;  —  while 
yet  his  eyes  were  dim,  and  his  breast  laden,  and  he 
could  but  employ  Reason  in  the  things  of  Faith.  And 
now,  dear  Reader,  time  is  short,  eternity  is  long.  Put 
not  from  you  what  you  have  here  found ;  regard  it  not 
as  mere  matter  of  present  controversy;  set  not  out  re- 
solved to  refute  it,  and  looking  about  for  the  best  way 
of  doing  so;  seduce  not  yourself  with  the  imagination 
that  it  comes  of  disappointment,  or  disgust,  or  restless- 
ness, or  wounded  feeling,  or  undue  sensibility,  or  other 
weakness.  Wrap  not  yourself  round  in  the  associations 
of  years  past,  nor  determine  that  to  be  truth  which  you 
wish  to  be  so,  nor  make  an  idol  of  cherished  anticipa- 
tions.  Time  is  short,  eternity  is  long. 

Nunc  dimittis  servum  tuum  Domine, 
Secundum  verbum  tuum  in  pace 
Quia  viderunt  oculi  mei  salutare  TUUM. 

I  Newman's  act  of  conversion  was,  undoubtedly, 
tthe  most  important  religious  event  of  England 


54    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

in  the  nineteenth  century  —  so  much,  after  all, 
do  the  struggle  and  destiny  of  a  great  individual 
soul  outweigh  in  significance  the  unconscious  or 
undeliberate  movements  of  masses  of  men.  Nor 
is  the  process  by  which  he  passed  from  Angli- 
canism to  Romanism  hard  to  follow.  We  have 
|seen  that  from  boyhood  the  one  reality  to  him 
I  was  the  existence  of  his  own  soul  and  of  God,  and 
we  have  heard  his  confession  of  strange  uneasi- 
ness in  the  presence  even  of  the  beautiful  things 
of  this  world.  In  a  passage  of  the  Apologia  of  no- 
ble eloquence  he  deduces  his  creed  quite  logically 
from  these  feelings: 

Starting  then  with  the  being  of  a  God, ...  I  look  out 
of  myself  into  the  world  of  men,  and  there  I  see  a  sight 
which  fills  me  with  unspeakable  distress.  . .  .  The  sight 
of  the  world  is  nothing  else  than  the  prophet's  scroll, 
full  of  "lamentations,  and  mourning,  and  woe." 
'"■  To  consider  the  world  in  its  length  and  breadth,  its 
various  history,  the  many  races  of  man,  their  starts, 
their  fortunes,  their  mutual  alienation,  their  conflicts; 
and  then  their  ways,  habits,  governments,  forms  of  wor- 
ship; their  enterprises,  their  aimless  courses,  their  ran- 
dom achievements  and  acquirements,  the  impotent  con- 
clusion of  long-standing  facts,  the  tokens  so  faint  and 
broken  of  a  superintending  design,  the  blind  evolution 
of  what  turn  out  to  be  great  powers  or  truths,  the  pro- 
gress of  things,  as  if  from  unreasoning  elements,  not  to- 
wards final  causes,  the  greatness  and  littleness  of  man, 
his  far-reaching  aims,  his  short  duration,  the  curtain 
hung  over  his  futurity,  the  disappointments  of  life,  the 
defeat  of  good,  the  success  of  evil,  physical  pain,  mental 
anguish,  the  prevalence  and  intensity  of  sin,  the  pervad- 


CARDINAL    NEWMAN  55 

ing  idolatries,  the  corruptions,  the  dreary  hopeless  ir- 
religion,  that  condition  of  the  whole  race,  so  fearfully 
yet  exactly  described  in  the  Apostle's  words,  "having 
no  hope  and  without  God  in  the  world,"  —  all  this  is  a 
vision  to  dizzy  and  appal;  and  inflicts  upon  the  mind 
the  sense  of  a  profound  mystery,  which  is  absolutely 
beyond  human  solution. 

, . .  And  so  I  argue  about  the  world;  —  if  there  be  a 
^pd,  since  there  is  a  God,  the  human  race  is  implicated 
in  some  terrible  aboriginal  calamity.  It  is  out  of  joint  '  ^<yT^~ 
with  the  purposes  of  its  Creator.  This  is  a  fact,  a  fact  _j 
as  true  as  the  fact  of  its  existence;  and  thus  the  doctrine 
of  what  is  theologically  called  original  sin  becomes  to 
me  almost  as  certain  as  that  the  world  exists,  and  as 
the  existence  of  God. 

In  these  paragraphs,  which  I  have  weakened 
somewhat  by  condensing,  we  have  expressed, 
then,  the  basis  of  Newman's  faith  —  the  two 
realities  of  God  and  of  man's  fall  from  God,  with 
the_consequent  state  of  the  world's  misery  and 
blind  ignorance.  From  these  two  supreme  real- 
ities, as  they  seem  to  him,  he  argues  that  it  would 
be  perfectly  natural  to  expect,  that  indeed  we 
must  expect,  some  clear  instrument  of  revela- 
*ti6n,  or  provision  of  the  Creator,  "for  retaining  in 
tiie  world  a  knowledge  of  Himself,  so  definite  and 
destined  as  to  be  a  proof  against  the  energy  of 
human  scepticism."  This  was  Newman's  creed 
when  he  went  up  to  Oxford,  it  was  his  creed  when 
he  retired  to  Littlemore,  and  it  was  his  creed 
when  he  wore  the  cardinal.  The  only  difference 
lay  in  his  conception  of  the  manner  in  which  this 


56    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

divine  provision,  or  instrument  of  revelation, 
manifested  itself  to  mankind.  And  his  change  in 
this  respect  may  be  expressed  in  a  series  of  ex- 
clusions. To  Newman  it  seemed  that  the  minds 
of  men  were  sharply  divided,  in  accordance  with 
.their  ways  of  regarding  revelation,  into  the 
Roman  Catholic,  the  Anglican,  the  Protestant, 
and  the  rationalistic.  The  last-named  condition, 
"rationalism,  as  it  left  no  place  for  an  absolute 
revelation,  was  immediately  excluded  by  him; 
it  was  abhorrent  to  everything  his  nature  craved. 
There  remained  the  three  forms  of  Christianity. 
But  of  these.  Protestantism  was  also  excluded, 
because  he  saw  at  once,  and  rightly,  I  think,  that 
its  certain  goal  was  rationalism.  Protestantism, 
as  he  properly  used  the  word,  differs  from  the 
1  Anglican  and  Roman  creeds  in  looking  to  the 
;  Bible  alone  for  its  source  of  revelation,  and  in 
!  making  the  individual  mind  the  judge  of  what 
■the  Bible  teaches  instead  of  subordinating  the 
judgement  of  the  individual  to  the  authority  of 
the  Fathers  and  of  the  Church.  Now  it  is  clear, 
if  the  reason  of  the  individual  is  to  determine  the 
meaning  of  revelation,  that  reason  is  the  ulti- 
mate authority,  and  the  step  to  rationalism  is 
easy  and  inevitable.  This  was  seen  perfectly  well 
by  the  controversialists  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, and  the  great  bulwark  of  Protestantism, 
Chillingworth's  The  Religion  of  Protestants  a 
Safe  Way  to  Salvation,  or,  as  one  of  the  books  of 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  57 

that  work  is  entitled,  Scripture  the  only  Rule 
whereby  to  judge  of  Controversies,  was  a  long  and, 
it  must  be  said,  fundamentally  unsuccessful  at- 
tempt to  rebut  just  such  charges  made  against 
Protestantism  by  a  certain  Jesuit,  Matthias  Wil- 
son, who  wrote  under  the  name  of  Edward  Knott. 
History  was  on  the  side  of  the  Jesuit,  for  it  can 
be  demonstrated  that  the  deistic  rationalism  of 
the  eighteenth  century  was  a  direct  outcome  of 
the  Protestant  rationalism  of  such  writers  as 
Chillingworth ;  and  again  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury Newman  perceived  that  this  same  close 
kinship  existed  between  the  Protestant,  or  Evan- 
gelical, wing  of  the  Church  and  the  rationalistic 
and  scientific  tendencies  of  his  own  day. 

Protestantism  of  the  Bible  was  therefore  ex- 
cluded by  Newman  for  a  Church  which  claimed  a 
direct  authority  outside  of  and  supplementary  to, 
though  never  subversive  of,  the  Bible.  His  prin- 
cipal work,  before  his  final  conversion,  was  The 
Via  Media,  an  endeavour  to  maintain  the  supre- 
macy of  the  Anglican  creed  as  a  middle  and  safe 
way  between  Protestantism  and  Roman  Cathol- 
icism. His  argument,  in  brief,  is  this.  He  agrees 
with  Rome  in  demanding  some  instrument  of 
revelation  outside  of  the  individual's  understand- 
ing of  the  Bible,  some  authority  which  can  an- 
swer directly  and  unmistakably  the  many  ques- 
^tions  which  the  Bible  leaves  obscure,  and  he 
agrees  with  Rome  in  holding  that  the  only  au- 


58    THE  DRIFT  OF  ROMANTICISM 

thorlty  which  has  the  divine  commission  to  an- 
swer .such  questions  is  the  Church.  But  he  dif- 
fers from  Rome  in  defining  the  Church.  The 
voice  of  the  Church  with  him  is  in  the  writings  of 
the  Fathers  and  the  decisions  of  the  Councils  up 
to  a  certain  point  of  time.  That  is  to  say,  up  to 
and  including  the  Council  of  Nicsea  the  Church, 
he  thought,  was  united  and  authoritative  in  its 
interpretation  and  expansion  of  the  faith,  or 
depositum  fidei,  which  was  originally  entrusted 
to  it.  After  that  date  the  Councils  ceased  to 
represent  the  whole  Christian  community  and 
were  subject  to  errors  of  passion  and  judgement. 
Newman  at  this  time  made  much  of  the  famous 
saying  of  St.  Vincent  of  Lerins,  Quod  semper, 
quod  ubique,  quod  ah  omnibus  (What  has  been 
believed  always,  everywhere,  and  by  all) ;  as  a 
matter  of  fact  he  accepted  the  ubique  and  the  ab 
omnibus,  but  rejected  the  semper.  The  true  re- 
formation adopted  by  Anglicanism  was,  in  his 
view,  merely  a  return  to  the  ancient  and  uni- 
versal faith  of  the  Church  by  eliminating  the 
false  accretions  which  had  been  added  since  the 
Council  of  Nicaea  and  which  constituted  the 
corruptions  of  the  Roman  branch  of  the  Church ; 
Anglicanism  was  truly  catholic ;  Romanisni_was 
sectarian. 

But  Newman's  logical  mind  soon  found  this 
position  as  difhcult  to  hold  as  that  of  Bible  Pro- 
testantism which  he  had  so  summarily  rejected. 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  59 

For,  after  all,  what  is  the  essential  difference  be- 
tween clinging  to  one  particular  book  as  the  sole 
depository  of  faith  and  accepting  the  books  of  a 
determined  period  ?  The  Fathers  and  Councils 
must  be  interpreted,  and  selection  must  be  made 
among  their  various  sayings,  by  the  individual 
reason  just  as  in  the  case  of  the  Bible.  The  dis- 
tinction is  one  of  magnitude  only,  not  of  kind. 
Against  this  need  of  interpreting  the  Bible  or  a 
closed  set  of  books,  Rome  upheld  the  institu- 
tion of  the  Church,  as  a  living  voice  having  di- 
vhie  authority  to  answer  the  questions  of  men  as 
they  arise'ahd  to  develop  the  faith  in  accordance 
with  the  growth  of  human  knowledge.  Grant 
Newman's  unshakable  demand  for  a  distinct 
verbal  revelation,  grant  his  demand  for  a  rigidly 
logical  and  external  authority,  and  the  path 
would  seem  to  be  step  by  step  to  Rome. 

Yet  I  confess  I  have  never  been  able  to  follow 
him  in  his  course  without  a  feeling  of  uneasi- 
ness, and  that  feeling  has  been  deepened  into 
something  like  distress  by  reading  the  authori- 
tative record  of  his  life.^  The  very  plan  of  Mr. 
Ward's  work  is  of  a  sort  to  raise  disquieting 
questions.  It  gives  only  a  single  chapter  to  the 
events  of  Newman's  life  down  to  and  including 
his  conversion,  and  devotes  the  remainder  of 
two   bulky  volumes  to    his  experiences  in  the 

1  The  Life  of  John  Henry  Cardinal  Newman :  Based  on  His  Private 
Journals  and  Correspondence.  By  Wilfrid  Ward.  2  vols.  New  York  ; 
Longmans,  Green  &  Co.  1912. 


6o    THE   DRIFT  OF   ROMANTICISM 

Roman  Church.  For  this  outrageous  dispropor- 
tion Mr.  Ward  is  not  altogether  responsible. 
The  story  of  the  early  years  and  conversion  has 
already  been  related  by  Newman  himself  in  the 
Apologia,  and  this  has  been  supplemented  by 
the  two  volumes  of  his  letters  edited  by  Miss 
Mozley.  It  was  Newman's  own  desire  that  no- 
thing should  be  added  to  those  records  by  his 
present  official  biographer.  Mr.  Ward's  work, 
therefore,  should  properly  be  read,  not  as  a 
complete  and  independent  memoir,  but  as 
a  continuation  of  Miss  Mozley's  record.  I  am 
bound  to  say,  however,  that,  even  with  this  res- 
ervation, the  present  volumes  err  somewhat  in 
proportion.  Newman  was  seldom  at  his  best  as 
a  letter-writer,  and  a  good  deal  of  the  corre- 
spondence now  printed  is  neither  necessary  to 
an  understanding  of  Newman's  character  nor 
entertaining  in  itself.  For  the  rest,  Mr.  Ward's 
difficult  task  has  been  admirably  and  coura- 
geously carried  through.  When  he  himself  takes 
the  pen  in  hand  his  narrative  and  characteriza- 
tion are  clear,  succinct,  and  interesting. 

But  with  all  Mr.  Ward's  tact  and  despite  his 
good  faith  as  a  Catholic,  one  cannot  close  these 
two  volumes  without  feeling  that  Newman's  sur- 
render to  the  appeal  of  Rome  was  a  pathetic  mis- 
take. It  was  as  if  the  convert,  by  altering  his 
direction,  had  suddenly  brought  himself  face 
to  face  with  a  stone  wall.  To  every  plan  he 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  6i 

broached  for  new  activity  came  the  benumbing 
reply,  Non  possiimus.  He  was  hemmed  in,  barked 
at  by  opposition  on  every  side,  beaten  down  by 
exasperating  distrust  and  envy.  Mr.  Ward  tells 
with  valiant  honesty  all  the  plans  of  the  con- 
vert that  were  balked  in  one  way  or  another. 
The  difficulties  that  beset  him  as  editor,  as 
rector  of  the  Irish  Catholic  University,  and  as 
promoter  of  a  propaganda  in  Oxford  to  influ- 
ence the  intellectual  life  of  England,  are  typical 
of  his  career.  In  the  end,  when  his  active  years 
were  past  and  he  could  no  longer  disturb  those 
in  authority,  he  received  due  recognition  in  the 
Cardinalate,  and  his  closing  days  were,  we  like 
to  believe,  crowned  with  a  great  peace.  It  is 
true  also  that  more  than  once  in  his  bitter  years, 
with  a  tone  of  conviction  it  would  be  dishonour- 
ble  to  doubt,  he  repudiated  the  suggestion  of 
regret  over  his  move.  In  his  saddest  moment 
he  could  write  —  ex  animo,  as  he  said  —  "that 
Protestantism  is  the  dreariest  of  possible  re- 
ligions." He  could  distinguish  clearly  between 
the  Church  and  its  rulers: 

To-day  is  the  20th  anniversary  of  my  setting  up  the 
Oratory  in  England,  and  every  year  I  have  more  to 
thank  God  for,  and  more  cause  to  rejoice  that  He 
helped  me  over  so  great  a  crisis.  —  Since  A.B.  obliges  me 
to  say  it,  this  I  cannot  omit  to  say:  —  I  have  found  in 
the  Catholic  Church  abundance  of  courtesy,  but  very 
little  sympathy,  among  persons  in  high  place,  except  a 
few  —  but  there  is  a  depth  and  a  power  in  the  Catholic 


62    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

religion,  a  fulness  of  satisfaction  in  its  creed,  its  theology, 
its  rites,  its  sacraments,  its  discipline,  a  freedom  yet  a 
support  also,  before  which  the  neglect  or  the  misappre- 
hension about  oneself  on  the  part  of  individual  living 
persons,  however  exalted,  is  as  so  much  dust,  when 
weighed  in  the  balance.  This  is  the  true  secret  of  the 
Church's  strength,  the  principle  of  its  indefectibility, 
and  the  bond  of  its  indissoluble  unity.  It  is  the  earnest 
and  the  beginning  of  the  repose  of  heaven. 

Yet  it  is  true  nevertheless  that  he  resented 
keenly  and  sometimes  denounced  sharply  not 
only  the  thwarting  of  his  personal  ambitions,  but 
also  the  limitations  imposed  upon  his  intellectual 
aJid  spiritual  mission.  He  who  felt  himself  born 
to  be  a  leader  of  his  people  found  himself  sud- 
denly thrust  into  ignoble  obscurity.  To  his  be- 
loved Ambrose  St.  John  he  wrote,  in  1857:  "To 
the  rising  generation,  to  the  sons  of  those  who 
knew  me,  or  read  what  I  wrote  fifteen  or  twenty 
years  ago,  I  am  a  mere  page  of  history.  ...  It 
was  at  Oxford,  and  by  my  Parochial  sermons, 
that  I  had  influence  —  all  that  is  past."  And 
three  years  later,  in  the  intimacy  of  his  diary, 
he  could  exclaim:  "O  my  God,  I  seem  to  have 
jwasted  these  years  that  I  have  been  a  Catholic. 
What  I  wrote  as  a  Protestant  has  had  far  greater 
power,  force,  meaning,  success  than  my  Catholic 
works,  and  this  troubles  me  a  great  deal."  It  is 
not  strange  that  his  inner  vision  was  at  times  per- 
turbed, his  faith  almost  touched.  "As  years  go 
on,"  he  records  in  his  diary,  "I  have  less  sensi- 


CARDINAL    NEWMAN  63 

ble  devotion  and  inward  life."  He  even  notes  a 
change  in  his  physical  expression:  "Till  the  af- 
fair of  No.  ninety  and  my  going  to  Littlemore, 
I  had  my  mouth  half  open,  and  commonly  a 
smile  on  my  face  —  and  from  that  time  onwards 
my  mouth  has  been  closed  and  contracted,  and 
the  muscles  are  so  set  now,  that  I  cannot  but  look 
grave  and  forbidding."  Inevitably,  as  this  feel- 
ing of  failure  and  loneliness  deepened,  he  con- 
tras^teHTFe  poverty  of  the  present  with  the  actual 
power  and  richer  promise  of  his  Oxford  career. 
There  is  a  pathetic  letter  written  in  1863  to 
Keble,  who  had  started  on  the  path  with  him, 
or  even  before  him,  but  had  drawn  back  at  the 
edge  of  the  precipice  —  a  letter  whose  closing 
words  are,  as  it  were,  the  revelation  of  a  great 
and  hidden  tragedy: 

I  have  said  all  this,  knowing  it  will  interest  you. 
Never  have  I  doubted  for  one  moment  your  affection 
for  me,  never  have  I  been  hurt  at  your  silence.  I  inter- 
preted it  easily  —  it  was  not  the  silence  of  others.  It 
was  not  the  silence  of  men,  nor  the  forgetfulness  of  men, 
who  can  recollect  about  me  and  talk  about  me  enough, 
when  there  is  something  to  be  said  to  my  disparagement. 
You  are  always  with  me  a  thought  of  reverence  and  love, 
and  there  is  nothing  I  love  better  than  you,  and  Isaac, 
and  Copeland,  and  many  others  I  could  name,  except 
Him  Whom  I  ought  to  love  best  of  all  and  supremely. 
May  He  Himself,  Who  is  the  over-abundant  compen- 
sation for  all  losses,  give  me  His  own  Presence,  and  then 
I  shall  want  nothing  and  desiderate  nothing,  but  none 
oM?'He  can  make  up  for  the  loss  of  those  old  familiar 
^ces  which  haunt  me  continually. 


64     THE    DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

It  would  be  easy  to  exaggerate,  possibly  the 
tone  of  Mr.  Ward's  narrative  tempts  one  to  ex- 
aggerate, the  sadder  aspect  of  Newman's  life  in 
the  Catholic  Church.  It  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  his  Apologia,  which  contains  some  of  the 
most  beautiful  religious  writing  of  the  age,  his 
Idea  of  a  University,  and  other  works  which  will 
not  be  forgotten,  were  written  after  his  conver- 
sion. Yet  withal  it  is  hard  to  avoid  the  con- 
clusion that  in  a  purely  literary  way  something 
was  lost  to  him  when  he  severed  himself  from 
the  tradition  in  which  his  imagination  and  feel- , 
ings  were  so  deeply  rooted.  The  mere  physical 
change  from  the  glories  and  haunting  memories 
of  the  colleges  of  Oxford  to  the  crudeness  of 
the  Oratory  at  Edgbaston  took  away  one  of  the 
props  of  his  imagination.  The  knowledge  that 
lie  no  longer  belonged  to  the  faith  of  the  great 
body  of  his  countrymen,  but  was  regarded  by 
them,  whether  rightly  or  wrongly,  as  one  of  a 
sect,  deprived  him  of  that  support  of  sympathy 
which  was  necessary  to  the  full  unfolding  of  his 
genius.  And  the  loss  was  not  Newman's  alone, 
but  ours  and  all  men's.  At  the  close  of  the 
chapter  which  includes  the  conversion  Mr.  Ward 
quotes  the  beautiful  words  of  Principal  Shairp  on 
the  effect  of  what  seemed  to  Anglicans  an  act  of 
apostasy : 

How  vividly  comes  back   the  remembrance  of  the 
aching  blank,  the  awful  pause,  which  fell  on  Oxford 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  65 

when  that  voice  had  ceased,  and  we  knew  that  we 
should  hear  it  no  more.  It  was  as  when,  to  one  kneeling 
by  night,  in  the  silence  of  some  vast  cathedral,  the  great 
bell  tolling  solemnly  overhead  has  suddenly  gone  still. 
To  many,  no  doubt,  the  pause  was  not  of  long  continu- 
ance. Soon  they  began  to  look  this  way  and  that  for 
new  teachers,  and  to  rush  vehemently  to  the  opposite 
extremes  of  thought.  But  there  were  those  who  could 
not  so  lightly  forget.  All  the  more  these  withdrew  into 
themselves.  On  Sunday  forenoons  and  evenings,  in  the 
retirement  of  their  rooms,  the  printed  words  of  those 
marvellous  sermons  would  thrill  them  till  they  wept 
"  abundant  and  most  sweet  tears."  Since  then  many 
voices  of  powerful  teachers  they  may  have  heard,  but 
none  that  ever  penetrated  the  soul  like  his. 

With  no  desire  to  intrude  into  the  debate  be- 
tween Anglican  and  Roman,  with  interest  cen- 
tred rather  upon  the  purely  human  aspect  of  the 
act,  one  may  well  feel,  even  to-day,  something 
of  that  deep  chagrin  which  Principal  Shairp  and 
Matthew  Arnold  and  other  contemporaries  ex- 
pressed. Not  for  Oxford  controversialists  alone, 
but  for  all  who  draw  their  spiritual  sustenance 
from  English  literature,  that  event  was,  if  not 
the  silencing,  at  least  the  muffling,  of  a  magic 
voice. 

Newman,  as  we  have  seen,  was  led  to  take 
the  fatal  step  by  strictly  logical  deductions. 
Grant  his  premisses,  that  the  human  mind  is  con- 
fined to  a  choice  within  the  circle  of  religious 
authority  and  rationalism,  and  it  is  easy  to 
follow   him  on   his   path   to    Rome.    But   the 


66    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

question  remains  whether  this  circle  is  indeed 
the  boundary  of  man's  intellectual  and  spiritual 
jpower.  Certainly  beyond  the  reach  of  rational- 
ism, or  science,  to  use  its  modern  equivalent, 
there  lies  the  purely  sceptical  habit;  and  there 
are  those  who  will  maintain  that  in  the  other 
direction,  beyond  the  utmost  bounds  of  dogma 
and  revelation,  they  have  discerned,  more  or  less 
clearly,  a  realm  of  pure  religious  intuition  which 
is  reserved  for  the  mystical  eye.  Now  if  we  try 
to  determine  in  what  way  Newman's  inner  circle 
of  revelation  and  science  is  separated  from  the 
outer  circle  of  mysticism  and  scepticism  which 
he  barely  touched,  we  shall  find  no  better  mark 
of  distinction  than  in  the  attitude  of  the  mind, 
in  one  and  the  other  circle,  towards  the  unrelated 
details  of  experience.  Using  this  criterion,  we 
shall  see  that  m  the  circle  of  revelation  and 
science  (philosophical  science,  that  is,  as  the 
modern  form  of  rationahsni)  the  mind  relaxes  jts 
grip  to  a  certain  extent _on^  the  insistent  reality 
of  details  or  individual  moments  of  experience  in 
order  to  preserve  its  belief  in  the  universality  of 
some  supposed  personal  force  or  of  some  natural 
law;  whereas  in  the  circle  of  the  mystic  and  the 
sceptic  the  mind  never  relaxes  its  grip  on  the 
individual  detailfor  such  a^perspnal  or  material 
law.  It  may  sound  somewhat  paradoxical  to 
bring  revelation  and  science  together  in  such 
a  bond,  and  indeed  in  one  sense  there  is  a  real 


CARDINAL    NEWMAN  67 

dlfiference  between  the  two,  in  so  far  as  religion 
has  to  do  with  a  spiritual  experience  while 
science  is  concerned  with  physical  or  material 
experience;  but  in_their  manner  of  dealing  with 
these  two  kinds  of  experience  they  are  in  ac- 
cord. The  man  to  whom  religion  means  revel- 
ation only,  holds  resolutely  to  the  reality  of  a 
personal  God,  at  once  Creator  and  Providence, 
who  reveals  himself  by  the  voice  of  authority, 
whether  written  or  spoken.  It  makes  no  differ- 
ence to  him  that  creeds  have  changed  from  age 
to  age,  or  that  a  thousand  creeds  exist  side  by 
side,  or  that  this  or  that  moment  of  his  experi- 
ence seems  to  contradict  such  a  belief:  his  be- 
lief abides.  And  so  with  the  man  of  science.  He 
holds  resolutely  to  the  reality  of  some  infallible 
natural  cause  controlling  the  world,  which  re- 
veals  itself_  by;.,  tradition  and  experiment.  It 
makes  no  difference  to  him  that  the  formulation 
of  this  cause  has  changed  from  age  to  age,  or  that 
a  host  of  contradictory  formulae  exist  side  by  side, 
or  that  individual  experiments  are  constantly 
forcing  him  to  question  his  scientific  belief:  his 
belief  abides.  Such  a  definition  of  the  scientific 
method  may  seem  contrary  to  what  is  commonly 
held,  for  we  are  apt  to  think  of  science  as  the 
habit  of  mind  which  searches  for  and  clings  to 
the  actual  individual  fact  independently  of  pre- 
supposition or  theory  and  regardlessly  of  con- 
sequence ;  and  science  in  its  positive  form  may  be 


68    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

of  that  character.  But  the  rationalistic  science 
of  which  I  speak,  the  science  which  really  counts 
and  which  colours  to-day  our  popular  philoso- 
phies, is  of  quite  another  sort.  Take  as  an  illus- 
tration the  present  state  of  evolutionary  biology: 
what  is  the  actual  practice  of  the  leading  biolo- 

Tgists?  They  all,  or  nearly  all,  start  with  the  pre- 
supposition  that  the  whole  animate  world  is  de- 

iveloping  under  some  evolutionary  cause  which 

[has  been,  or  can  be,  discovered  and  formulated. 

^o  one  biologist  this  cause  is  the  survival  of  the 
fit,  to  another  it  is  Lamarckianism,  or  othogenesis, 
or  mutation,  or  kinetogenesis,  or  metakinesis, 
or  orthoplasy,  or  —  who  shall  say  what?  I  quote 
a  strange  language  ignorantly.  The  theories  dif- 
fer, are  indeed  often  diametrically  opposed,  but 
the  method  of  theorizing  is  always  the  same. 
Having  observed  a  certain  number  of  phenomena 
the  biologist  proceeds  to  formulate  from  them 
his  notion  of  the  evolutionary  cause.  But  to  do 
^  this  he  inevitably  neglects,  it  may  be  by  an  un- 
S^,  conscious  absorption  or  it  may  be  by  half  dis- 
•^  honest  closing  of  the  eyes,  all  the  phenomena 
^  that  will  not  fit  into  his  formula.  Then  comes 
a  brother  theorist  who  takes  part  of  these  ne- 
glected phenomena  and  builds  up  a  different  for- 
mula. The  point  is  that  this  rationalistic  form 
of  science  depends  on  an  invincible  belief  in  some 
universal  law  of  nature,  and  on  a  tendency  to 
overlook  if  necessary  the   individual   phenom- 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  69 

enon  in  favour  of  this  law.  The  various  theories 
"keep  and  pass  and  turn  again,"  but  the  faith 
in  theory,  Hke  the  Brahma  of  the  poem,  abides 
unshaken : 

I  am  the  doubter  and  the  doubt. 

I  cannot  see  that  the  method  differs  one  whit 
from  that  of  the  dogmatist  in  rehgion:  the  one, 
maintaining  his  faith  in  an  unvarying  cause,  and 
untroubled  by  refractory  details,  formulates  his 
experience  with  material  phenomena  into  a  scien- 
tific hypothesis;  the  other,  holding  fast  to  his 
faith  in  God's  revelation  of  himself  to  the  human 
soul,  expands  his  inner  experience  into  a  myth- 
ology, unconcerned  by  individual  facts  that  can- 
not be  reconciled  to  his  creed.  And  just  as  these 
two  methods  agree  together,  so  they  differ  in  the 
same  way  from  the  habit  of  mind  of  the  sceptic 
and  mystic.  As  a  confirmation  of  this  agreement 
and  difference  you  will  find  that  the  dogmatist, 
whose  religion  is  confined  to  revelation,  and  the 
rationalistic  man  of  science  may  in  the  long  run 
corne  together,  are  actually  coming  together  to- 
day. It  is  a  notable  fact  that.^ewman's  doc- 
trine of  development  is  taken  by  the  modernists 
as  a  substantial  bond  between  revelation  and 
evolution.  Both  dogmatist  and  scientist  avert 
their  faces  from  the  outer  ring  of  the  mystic 
and  the  sceptic.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  per- 
fectly easy  for  a  sceptic  like  Sainte-Beuve  to  en- 


70    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

ter  into  the  mind  of  a  mystic  such  as  Pascal, 
while  Pascal  himself  avowed  explicitly  his  su- 
preme scepticism. 

The  genuine  sceptic  is  very  rare,  but  his  char- 
acteristics may  be  known  by  comparing  such  a 
mind  as  Sainte-Beuve's  with  Taine's.  Both  men 
wrote  much  on  literature,  but  they  approached 
the  subject  in  utterly  different  ways.  Taine  be- 
lieved that  an  absolute  law  could  be  found 
for  determining  why  a  particular  sort  of  writing 
should  appear  at  any  time.  Given  a  complete 
knowledge  of  an  author's  race,  environment,  and 
epoch,  his  works  could  be  analyzed  as  accurately 
as  a  chemist  analyzes  the  ingredients  of  sugar  or 
vitriol.  This  is  the  famous  formula  on  which  he 
based  his  History  of  English  Literature;  it  is,  as 
you  see,  the  extreme  application  of  the  scientific 
or  rationalistic  method,  and  Taine  is  properly 
regarded  as  the  father  of  scientific  criticism.  In 
his  essay  on  Taine's  History,  Sainte-Beuve  ob- 
serves that  such  a  formula,  however  interesting 
it  may  be,  errs  in  leaving  out  of  account  the  inex- 
plicable and  unpredictable  personal  equation  of 
the  writer  himself.  Here  was  the  individual  fact 
which  no  extent  of  knowledge  could  bring  under 
scientific  rule,  but  which  must  be  held  and  con- 
sidered in  itself.  And  exactly  here  lies  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  scientific  and  the  sceptical 
attitude  of  mind  —  on  the  one  side  the  dominat- 
ing desire  to  correlate  individual  facts  by  means  of 


CARDINAL    NEWMAN  71 

a  general  cause,  on  the  other  side  the  grasp  of  the 
individual  fact  at  all  hazards  and  through  all 
losses.  Sainte-Beuve  liked  to  think  of  himself  as 
a  scientific  investigator,  and  so  far  as  that  phrase 
applies  to  laborious  painstaking  he  is  justified; 
but  his  interest  clung  always  to  the  individual 
phenomenon  and  not  to  the  general  cause,  and  in 
this  respect  he  was,  I  think,  the  most  perfect  ex- 
ample of  the  sceptic  in  modern  times.  Whither 
his  scepticism  led  him  may  be  known  by  reading 
the  great  and  melancholy  confession  which  he 
wrote  down  at  the  end  of  his  long  labours  on  the 
Port-Royal.  There,  too,  he  calls  himself  a  serv- 
ant of  science  and  a  man  of  truth,  as  indeed  he 
was;  yet  he  continues  — 

But  even  that,  how  little  it  is!  how  limited  is  our  view! 
how  quickly  it  reaches  an  end!  how  it  resembles  a  pale 
torch  lighted  for  a  moment  in  the  midst  of  a  vast  dark- 
ness! and  how  he  who  desires  most  earnestly  to  know 
his  subject,  who  is  most  ambitious  to  seize  it  and  has 
most  pride  in  depicting  it,  feels  himself  impotent  and 
unequal  to  his  task,  on  that  day  when,  in  the  presence 
of  the  finished  work  and  the  result  obtained,  the  intoxi- 
cation of  his  energy  passes  away,  when  the  final  ex- 
haustion and  the  inevitable  distaste  come  over  him, 
and  when  he,  too,  perceives  that  he  is  only  a  fleeting 
illusion  in  the  bosom  of  the  infinite  Illusion. 

That  is  the  confession  of  a  mind  not  essentially 
scientific  but  sceptical,  the  certain  sad  conclu- 
sion of  one  who  grasps  each  experience  as  it 
arises,  who  will  not  relax  his  hold  at  the  bidding 


72    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

of  any  command  or  authority  or  inner  need,  and 
who  sees  nothing  in  Hfe  but  these  unrelated 
experiences.  And  at  the  other  extreme,  beyond 
the  believer  in  authority  and  revelation  in  what- 
soever form,  is  the  mystic,  who,  like  the  sceptic, 
keeps  a  firm  grip  on  phenomena  as  they  appear 
and  sees  in  them  only  illusion  and  no  ruling 
of  Providence  or  of  a  definable  law,  but  who, 
unlike  the  sceptic,  knows  within  himself  an 
infinite  something,  unnamed,  indefinable,  the 
one  absolute  reality.  I  scarcely  know  where 
to  turn  in  modern  times  for  an  example  of  the 
.perfect  mystic.  Tennyson  in  some  of  his  utter- 
ances crossed  the  dark  border,  but  Tennyson's 
mind  was  too  much  concerned  also  with  the  domi- 
nant theories  of  his  day  to  afford  the  desired 
model.  Certainly  Newman,  essentially  religious 
as  his  temper  was  in  some  respects,  stopped  short 
of  this  last  step.  In  my  study  there  hang  side 
by  side  the  portraits  of  the  great  Cardinal  and 
the  great  critic,  and  I  often  compare  their  faces 
as  types  of  two  of  the  master  tendencies  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  In  the  firm,  sinuous  line  of 
Sainte-Beuve's  mouth,  in  the  penetrating,  self- 
contained  glance  of  the  eyes,  and  in  the  smooth 
capaciousness  of  the  brow  with  the  converging 
furrows  of  concentration  over  the  nose,  I  see  the 
supreme  expression  of  an  intelligence  that  saw  all, 
and  comprehended  all,  and  retained  every  detail, 
surrendering  nothing  of  itself;  but  of  faith  orreli- 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  73 

gious  submission  I  discover  no  look  or  mark.  And 
then  I  turn  to  the  other  portrait.  Cardinal  New- 
man, as  we  have  seen,  speaks  of  the  contraction 
of  his  features  under  the  stress  of  his  new  life. 
The  word,  to  one  who  examines  the  engraving  of 
Timothy  Cole  after  the  painting  by  Ouless,  does 
not  seem  quite  precise.  The  marks  of  struggle 
are  visible  enough,  but  signs  of  contraction,  in 
the  sense  of  hardening  or  strengthening,  I  do  not 
see.  The  mouth  is  strong,  but  the  lines  are  a  lit- 
tle relaxed ;  the  eyes  are  veiled  and  look  wistfully 
beyond  what  is  immediately  before  them  to  some 
visionary  hope;  the  brow  is  high  and  wrinkled 
transversely  from  the  perplexity  of  an  inner 
conflict.  Something  has  gone  out  of  this  face,  the 
contact  with  individual  facts  has  been  broken, 
and  in  its  place  has  come  the  sweetness  of  self- 
surrender,  the  submissive  pride  of  one  who  has 
given  up  much  that  he  may  find  all  —  if  haply 
he  has  found. 

This,  in  the  end,  must  be  our  reservation  in  the 
praise  due  to  Newman's  beautiful  life,  that  he 
stopped  short  of  the  purest  faith.  He  was  born  a 
man  with  deep  religious  needs  and  instincts,  a 
man  to  whom  the  spiritual  world  was  the  absorb- 
ing reahty,  beside  which  the  material  world  and 
its  appearances  were  but  as  shadows  gathered  in 
a  dream.  But  he  was  born  also  in  an  age  when 
the  old  faith  in  an  outer  authority  based  on  an 
exact  and  unequivocal  revelation  could  be  main- 


74    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

tained  only  by  doing  violence  to  the  integrity  of 
the  believer's  mind.   That  was  his  dilemma,  and 
there  lay  the  tragedy  of  his  choice.   Two  ways 
were  open  to  him.   On  the  one  hand,  he  might 
have  accepted  manfully  the  sceptical  demolition 
of  the  Christian  mythology  and  the  whole  fabric 
of  external  religion,  and  on  the  ruins  of  such  creeds 
he  might  have    risen  to  that  supreme  insight 
which  demands  no  revelation  and  is  dependent 
on  no  authority,  but  is  content  within  itself.    Do- 
ing this  he  might  possibly,  by  the  depth  of  his  re- 
ligious nature  and  the  eloquence  of  his  tongue, 
have  made  himself  the  leader  of  the  elect  out  of 
the  long  spiritual  death  that  is  likely  to  follow  the 
breaking-up  of  the  creeds.  Or,  if  that  task  seemed 
impossible  or  fraught  with  too  great  peril,  he 
might  have  held  to  the  national  worship  as  a 
symbol  of  the  religious  experience  of  the  people, 
and  into  that  worship  and  that  symbol  he  might 
have  breathed  the  new  fervour  of  his  own  faith, 
waiting  reverently  until  by  natural  growth  his 
people  were  prepared,  if  ever  they  should  be  pre- 
pared, to  apprehend  with  him  the  invisible  truth 
without  the  forms.   It  is  written:  "Blessed  are 
they  that  have  not  seen,  and  yet  have  believed." 
But  in  the  hour  of  need  his  heart  failed  him, 
and  he  demanded  to  see  with  his  eyes  and  feel 
with  his  hands.    He  was  not  strong  enough  to 
hold  fast  to  the  actual  discords  of  life  and  to 
discern  his  vision  of  peace  apart  from  their  illu- 


CARDINAL    NEWMAN  75 

sory  sphere,  but  found  it  necessary  to  warp  the 
facts  of  spiritual  experience  so  as  to  make  them 
agree  with  a  physical  revelation.  There  is  a 
sentence  in  a  letter  of  Cardinal  Wiseman  which 
comes  naturally  to  memory  when  one  thinks  of 
the  agony  through  which  the  later  prelate  was 
to  pass.  Speaking  of  his  own  struggle  as  a  young 
man  in  Rome,  Wiseman  wrote: 

I  was  fighting  with  subtle  thoughts  and  venomous 
suggestions  of  a  fiendlike  infidelity  which  I  durst  not 
confide  to  any  one,  for  there  was  no  one  that  could  have 
sympathized  with  me.  This  lasted  for  years;  but  it 
made  me  study  and  think,  to  conquer  the  plague  —  for 
I  can  hardly  call  it  danger  —  both  for  myself  and  for 
others.  .  .  .  But  during  the  actual  struggle  the  simple 
submission  of  faith  is  the  only  remedy.  Thoughts 
against  faith  must  be  treated  at  the  time  like  tempta- 
tions against  any  other  virtue  —  put  away. 

There  is  the  quick  of  the  matter:  thoughts 
against  faith  must  he  treated  at  the  time  like  temp- 
tations against  any  other  virtue  —  put  away.  The 
sentiment,  it  must  be  admitted,  recalls  a  little 
the  original  metaphor  of  Hobbes:  "For  it  is  with 
the  mysteries  of  our  religion  as  with  wholesome 
pills  for  the  sick,  which,  swallowed  whole,  have 
the  virtue  to  cure,  but,  chewed,  are  for  the  most 
part  cast  up  again  without  effect."  The  same 
idea  occurs  over  and  over  again  in  Newman's 
writings,  is,  in  fact,  the  very  basis  of  his  Grammar 
of  Assent  and  of  his  logical  system.  If  we  look 
closely  into  the  reasoning  by  which  he  was  driven 


76    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

step  by  step  from  Anglicanism  to  complete  sur- 
render to  the  authority  of  Rome,  we  shall  see  that 
his  logic  rests  on  an  initial  assumption  which  im- 
plies a  certain  lack  of  the  highest  faith  and  of  that 
sceptical  attitude  towards  our  human  needs  upon 
which  faith  must  ultimately  rest.  No  doubt  the 
same  charge  might  in  a  way  be  laid  against  all 
those  who  from  the  beginning  have  professed  a 
definite  religious  belief.  Certainly  this  weakness, 
if  we  may  so  call  it,  is  almost  inextricably  bound 
up  with  the  Christian  conception  of  the  deity  and 
of  salvation;  and  one  might  retort  that,  if  the 
religious  course  of  Newman  can  be  condemned 
as  a  defection  from  the  purest  insight,  the  same 
condemnation  must  apply  to  the  great  writers 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  We  may  admit  the 
retort,  and  yet  see  a  difference.  The  very  fact 
that  the  central  idea  of  a  definite  revelation  had 
not  yet  been  completely  undermined  permitted 
the  men  of  that  earlier  age  to  accept  it  more 
naively,  so  to  speak,  and  without  so  grave  a 
surrender  of  their  mental  integrity.  If  the  writ- 
ings of  such  men  as  Henry  More  and  the  other 
Platonists  of  the  seventeenth  century  give  us  a 
sense  of  freedom  and  enlargement  which  we  can- 
not quite  get  from  Cardinal  Newman,  it  is  be- 
cause these  earlier  theologians,  notwithstanding 
their  apparent  dogmatism,  were  in  reality  akin  to 
the  mystics  of  all  ages  who  find  their  peace  in  a 
faith  that  needs  no  surrender.   Pascal  was  in  a 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  77 

sense  one  of  the  forerunners  of  modern  romanti- 
cism, and  there  is  unquestionably  a  taint  of  mor- 
bidness in  his  practices;  yet,  withal,  Pascal  was 
saved  by  his  scepticism,  and  beneath  his  apol- 
ogy for  a  fading  mythology  one  may  penetrate 
to  the  depths  of  the  purest  spiritual  faith.  For 
me,  at  least,  there  is  a  change  in  passing  from 
these  men  to  Newman,  Say  what  one  will,  there 
was  something  in  Newman's  conversion  of  failure 
in  duty,  a  betrayal  of  the  will.  In  succumbing  to 
an  authority  which  promised  to  allay  the  anguish 
of  his  intellect,  he  rejected  the  great  mission  of 
faith,  and  committed  what  may  almost  be  called 
the  gran  rifiuto.  In  the  agony  of  his  conversion 
and  in  his  years  of  poignant  dejection  there  is 
something  of  the  note  of  modern  romanticism 
intruding  into  religion.  His  inability  to  find 
peace  without  the  assurance  of  a  personal  God 
answering  to  the  clamour  of  his  desires  is  but 
another  aspect  of  that  illusion  of  the  soul  which 
has  lost  its  vision  of  the  true  infinite  and  seeks 
a  substitute  in  the  limitless  expansion  of  the 
emotions.  It  has  happened  to  me  sometimes, 
while  reflecting  on  Newman  clothed  in  the  car- 
dinal and  crowned  with  ecclesiastical  honours, 
that,  as  by  a  trick  of  the  imagination,  I  have 
been  carried  back  to  the  vast  hall  to  which  Vathek 
came  at  the  end  of  his  journey,  and  that,  looking 
intently  and  reverently  at  the  sublime  figure  on 
his  throne,  I  have  "discerned  through  his  bosom, 


78    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

which  was  transparent  as  crystal,  his  heart  en- 
veloped in  flames."  I  have  turned  away  in  sad- 
ness and  awe  from  the  face  of  one  who  had  per- 
haps the  finest  rehgious  nature  of  the  age,  yet 
failed  his  country  at  her  hour  of  greatest  need. 

But  it  would  be  presumptuous  to  end  in  such 
a  strain.  As  we  think  of  the  many  forces  that 
were  shaping  the  thoughts  and  ambitions  of  the 
century  from  which  we  have  just  emerged,  of  its 
dark  materialism,  its  intellectual  pride,  its  greed 
of  novelty,  its  lust  of  change,  its  cruel  egotism 
and  blind  penance  of  sympathy,  its  wandering 
virtues  and  vices,  its  legacy  of  spiritual  bewild- 
erment —  as  we  think  of  all  these,  then  let  us 
remember  also  how  the  great  convert  surrendered 
these  things  and  counted  them  as  dust  in  the 
balance  beside  the  vision  of  his  own  soul  face  to 
face  with  God.  It  may  be  that  his  seclusion  in 
the  Oratory  at  Edgbaston  was  not  unrelated  to 
the  almost  inevitable  inability  of  the  romantic 
temperament  to  live  in  harmony  with  society; 
but  it  sprang  also  from  a  nobler  discontent.  Who 
will  be  brave  to  assert  that  his  prayers  and  pen- 
ance were  wasted?  We  of  to-day  need  his  exam- 
ple and  may  be  the  better  for  it,  and  life  will  be 
a  little  darker  when  his  struggle  and  conquest 
are  forgotten.  Criticism  may  well  stand  abashed 
before  that  life.  More  than  that,  it  would  be  un- 
critical not  to  remember  that  the  Oxford  Univer' 
sity  Sermons,  however  they  may  point  forward  to 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  79 

what  we  were  bound  to  regard  as  an  act  of  defec- 
tion, contain  in  themselves  perhaps  the  noblest 
appeals  in  the  English  tongue  to  the  hazard 
of  the  soul.  They  may  well  stand  preeminent 
among  those  witnesses  to  "the  victory  of  Faith 
over  the  world's  power"  which  their  author  has 
so  passionately  celebrated : 

To  see  its  triumph  over  the  world's  wisdom,  we 
must  enter  those  solemn  cemeteries  in  which  are  stored 
the  relics  and  the  monuments  of  ancient  Faith  —  our 
libraries.  Look  along  their  shelves,  and  every  name  you 
read  there  is,  in  one  sense  or  other,  a  trophy  set  up  in 
record  of  the  victories  of  Faith.  How  many  long  lives, 
what  high  aims,  what  single-minded  devotion,  what 
intense  contemplation,  what  fervent  prayer,  what  deep 
erudition,  what  untiring  diligence,  what  toilsome  con- 
flicts has  it  taken  to  establish  its  supremacy !  This  has 
been  the  object  which  has  given  meaning  to  the  life  of 
Saints,  and  which  is  the  subject-matter  of  their  history. 
For  this  they  have  given  up  the  comforts  of  earth  and 
the  charities  of  home,  and  surrendered  themselves  to  an 
austere  rule,  nay,  even  to  confessorship  and  persecution, 
if  so  be  they  could  make  some  small  offering,  or  do 
some  casual  service,  or  provide  some  additional  safe- 
guard towards  the  great  work  which  was  in  progress. 


WALTER   PATER 


WALTER   PATER 

My  own  experience  with  Pater  may  be  given 
as  typical,  I  believe,  of  the  various  feelings  his 
work  arouses  in  different  readers.  As  a  very 
young  man,  immersed  in  the  current  of  roman- 
ticism that  ran  even  stronger  then  than  it  does 
now,  I  was  quite  dazzled  by  the  glamour  of  Pater's 
style  and  by  the  half-mystical  sensuousness  of 
his  philosophy.  Later,  when  a  little  more  know- 
ledge of  books  and  men  had  shown  me  the  mis- 
chief that  the  romantic  ideas  had  caused  and 
\vere  still  causing  to  literature  and  to  life,  there 
came  a  violent  revulsion,  and  for  years  I  was  un- 
able to  look  into  one  of  Pater's  books  without 
a  feeling  of  irritation.  His  slowly  manipulated 
sentences  seemed  to  me  merely  meretricious,  and  I 
could  not  dissociate  his  Epicureanism  from  the 
intellectual  and  moral  dissolution  which  from  the 
beginning  had  been  so  insidiously  at  work  in  the 
romantic  school,  and  from  which,  as  I  thought,  I 
had  myself  so  barely  escaped.  Still  later  came 
another  change.  With  the  tolerance  of  maturity 
and  of  that  scepticism,  perhaps,  which  comes  to 
most  of  us  with  looking  too  intently  into  the  tan- 
gle of  things,  I  grew  able  to  distinguish  between 
the  good  and  the  bad.  It  seemed  to  me  now,  as 
before,  that  what  Pater  really  stood  for  was  in  the 


84    THE   DRIFT  OF  ROMANTICISM 

last  analysis  false  and  dangerous,  but  at  the  same 
time  I  was  attracted  to  him  because,  after  all,  he 
di3  stand  for  something  distinct  and  consistent. 
And  I  learned  to  appreciate  his  style,  because  his 
words  were  so  deliberately  and  cunningly  chosen 
for  a  known  purpose.  Some  one  has  expressed 
repugnance  to  him  because  he  wrote  English  as 
if  it  were  a  dead  language;  on  the  contrary,  I 
came  to  see  that  no  language  is  really  dead,  how- 
ever censurable  it  may  be  in  other  respects,  so 
long  as  it  has  a  definite  and  deeply  implicated 
emotional  content  and  can  convey  to  others  the 
same  emotion  with  calculated  precision. 

Whatever  else  one  may  say  of  Pater,  however 
one  may  like  or  dislike  him,  he  stands  in  the  com- 
plex, elusive  nineteenth  century  a§^  a  clear  sign  of 
^something  fixed  and  known.  But  he  performs 
this  office  not  as  a  critic,  as  he  is  commonly  reck- 
oned; indeed,  of  the  critical  mind,  exactly  speak- 
ing, he  had  little,  being  at  once  something  more 
and  something  less  than  this.  The  hardest  test 
of  the  critic,  in  the  exercise  of  his  special  func- 
tion, is  his  tact  and  sureness  in  valuing  the  pro- 
ductions of  his  own  day.  But  in  that  tact  and 
sureness,  which  come  only  with  the  last  refine- 
ment of  self-knowledge.  Pater  was  never  an  adept. 
Take,  for  instance,  his  reviews  of  contemporary 
books  collected  under  the  title  of  Essays  from  the 
Guardian;  they  contain  no  doubt  a  good  deal 
that  is  worth  reading,  but  they  lack  discrimin- 


WALTER   PATER  85 

ation  and  leave  in  the  mind  no  sense  of  finely 
estimated  values;  their  very  language,  as  show- 
ing the  uncertainty  of  the  author's  mental  pro- 
cedure, falls  at  times  into  the  most  awkward 
involutions. 

Nor  was  his  power  of  discrimination  any 
firmer  when  dealing  with  the  past.  It  is  of  course 
a  perfectly  legitimate,  perhaps  the  higher,  func- 
tion of  criticism  to  take  the  expression  of  life  as 
it  comes  to  us  in  literature,  and  to  develop  there- 
from a  philosophy  and  vision  of  the  critic's  own; 
and... this  was  the  deliberate  intention  of  Pater. 
Such  an  aim  is  entirely  justifiable,  but  it  is  not 
justifiable  to  misunderstand  or  falsify  the  basis 
on  which  the  critic's  own  fabric  is  to  be  raised. 
If  he  is  true  critic  his  first  concern  must  be  the 
right  interpretation  of  the  documents  before  him, 
and  whatever  else  he  may  have  to  offer  must 
proceed  from  primary  veracity  of  understand- 
ing. Just  here  Pater  faulted,  or  defaulted.  He 
has  much  to  say  that  is  interesting,  even  per- 
suasive, about  the  great  leaders  and  movements 
of  the  past,  but  too  often  his  interpretation,  when 
the  spell  of  his  manner  is  broken,  turns  out  to  be 
fundamentally  wrong,  springing  not  from  a  de- 
sire to  see  the  facts  and  fit  them  into  his  argu- 
ment,_but  from  a  purely  literary  ambition  to 
illustrate  and  authorize  a  preconceived  theory 
of  life.  There  is,  beneath  much  erudition  and  a 
certain  surface  accuracy,  no  search  for  la  vraie 


86    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

verite,  to  use  one  of  his  own  phrases;  and  this 
disregard  of  the  truth  passes  inevitably  into  his 
own  superimposed  philosophy,  is  indeed  its  key- 
note. 

This  may  seem  a  harsh  judgement  to  pass  on 
a  writer  who  has  been  one  of  the  main  influences 
in  later  nineteenth-century  literature,  but  it  can 
be  easily  substantiated.  In  his  three  greatest 
works  —  Plato  and  Plantonism,  Marius  the  Epi- 
curean, and  The  Renaissance  —  he  has  dealt  with 
three  spiritual  crises  of  history ;  and  in  each  case 
he  has,  gravely,  though  with  varying  degrees, 
falsified  the  reality.  Plato  and  Platonism  is  a 
book  that  every  student  of  Greek  and  of  life 
should  read ;  it  is  in  itself  a  meticulously  wrought 
work  of  art  in  which  each  detail  is  fitted  into  its 
place  to  create  a  total  designed  effect;  but  that 
effect,  presented  as  an  interpretation  of  Plato,  is 
of  a  kind,  it  can  scarcely  be  said  too  emphat- 
ically, that  differs  absolutely  from  what  Plato 
himself  meant  to  convey  in  his  dialogues,  and 
is  nothing  less  than  a  betrayal  of  critical  trust. 
In  one  of  his  chapters  Pater  gives  a  picture,  based 
ostensibly  on  Karl  Otfried  Miiller,  of  the  Doric 
life  in  Lacedaemon  as  the  actuality  which  Plato 
had  in  mind  when  he  conceived  his  ideal  city- 
state.  It  is  a  picture  of  cool  colours  and  deli- 
ciously  subdued  harmonies,  an  idyl  beautiful  in 
itself,  and  not  without  lessons  for  the  youth  of 
to-day  in  its  insistence  on  the  sheer  loveliness 


WALTER   PATER  87 

and  exquisite  pleasures  that  may  flow  from  cal- 
culated renunciation  and  self-suppression.  It  has 
its  own  wisdom,  shown  especially  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  text,  suggested  by  Miiller,  to  the  ef- 
fect that  "in  a  Doric  State  education  was,  on  the 
whole,  a  matter  of  more  importance  than  gov- 
ernment." But  it  has  one  grave  defect:  it  is  not 
true  to  the  facts,  This  city,  as  the  portrait  fin- 
ally arranges  itself,  is  simply  not  the  cold,  hard 
Sparta  that  lay  on  the  banks  of  the  Eurotas,  but 
some  glorified  Auburn  wafted  into  an  Arcadia  of 
the  imagination.  At  the  end  of  the  chapter,  after 
giving  a  brave  account  of  the  training,  or  askesis, 
by  which  the  Lacedaemonian  youth  were  drilled 
for  life,  Pater  represents  an  Athenian  visitor  as 
asking:  "Why  this  strenuous  task-work,  day 
after  day;  why  this  loyalty  to  a  system,  so  costly 
to  you  individually,  though  it  may  be  thought  to 
have  survived  its  original  purpose;  this  labor- 
ious, endless  education,  which  does  not  propose 
to  give  you  anything  very  useful  or  enjoyable  in 
itself?"  The  question  is  apt,  and  Pater  puts  the 
answer  into  the  mouth  of  a  Spartan  youth:  "To 
the  end  that  I  myself  may  be  a  perfect  work  of 
art,  issuing  thus  into  the  eyes  of  all  Greece."  — 
The  discipline  of  Lycurgus,  that  is  to  say,  was  to 
the  end  that  the  young  men  of  Sparta  might  be 
"a  spectacle,  aesthetically,  at  least,  very  inter- 
esting" (the  words  are  Pater's)  to  the  rest  of 
Greece!  Really,  a  more  complete  perversion  of 


88    THE   DRIFT  OF   ROMANTICISM 

history  has  not  often  been  conceived.  What  the 
institutions  of  Sparta  actually  stood  for  may  be 
known  in  a  word  from  the  opinion  of  the  Lace- 

femonian  in  Plato's  Laws;  they  were  ordered  to 
le  end  that  Sparta  might  conquer  the  other 
;ates  in  war,  nothing  more  nor  less  —  ^^rt 
•jToXefxio  viKav  ras  aXAas  7roXet9.  Not  the  indulgence 
of  vanity,  however  chastely  controlled,  but  the 
need  of  self-preservation  and  the  terrible  law  of 
the  survival  of  the  fittest  made  the  Lacedsemo- 
nian  men  and  women  the  comeliest  of  Hellas; 
they  were  warriors  and  the  mothers  of  warriors, 
not  aesthetes.^ 

And  this  same  misrepresentation  runs  through 
much  of  Pater's  direct  analysis  of  Platonism. 
Pater  saw,  as  all  who  study  Plato  are  forced  to 
see,  that  the  heart  of  Plato's  doctrine  lay  in  his 
conception  of  ideas,  in  his  use  and  enforcement  of 
dialectic  or  the  process  of  passing  intellectually 
from  particulars  to  generals.  But  Pater  could  not 
help  feeUng  also  that  there  was  something  in  this 
dialectical  procedure  that  did  not  accord  with  his 
particular  notion  of  sesthetics,  and  he  was  bound 
if  he  accepted  Platonism  —  as  it  was  his  desire  to 
assimilate  all  the  great  movements  of  history  — 
to  interpret  Platonic  ideas  in  his  own  way.    The 

•  A  critic  of  this  essay  has  accused  me  of  misrepresenting  Plato.  It  is 
true  that  the  Athenian  Stranger,  who  speaks  for  the  author  in  the 
Laws,  sees  a  higher  meaning)  in  the  institution  of  Lycurgus  tlian  is 
admitted  by  the  Lacedaemonian;  but  certainly,  whatever  may  have  been 
the  bye-product,  so  to  speali,  of  the  Spartan  constitution,  self-preserva- 
tion and  conquest  were  its  first  £ind  main  object. 


WALTER   PATER  89 

result  is  a  striking  passage  in  the  chapter  on  The 
Doctrine  of  Plato : 

To  that  gaudy  tangle  of  what  gardens,  after  all,  are 
meant  to  produce,  in  the  decay  of  time,  as  we  may  think 
at  first  sight,  the  systematic,  logical  gardener  put  his 
meddlesome  hand,  and  straightway  all  ran  to  seed;  to 
genus  and  species  and  differentia,  into  formal  classes, 
under  general  notions,  and  with  —  yes!  with  written 
labels  fluttering  on  the  stalks,  instead  of  blossoms  —  a 
botanic  or  "physic"  garden,  as  they  used  to  say,  in- 
stead of  our  flower-garden  and  orchard.  And  yet  (it 
must  be  confessed  on  the  other  hand)  what  we  actually 
see,  see  and  hear,  is  more  interesting  than  ever.  .  .  . 

So  it  is  with  the  shell,  the  gem,  with  a  glance  of  the 
eye;  so  it  may  be  with  the  moral  act,  with  the  con- 
dition of  the  mind,  or  a  feeling.  ...  Generalization, 
whatever  Platonists,  or  Plato  himself  at  mistaken  mo- 
rnents,  may  have  to  say  about  it,  is  a  method,  not  of 
obliterating  the  concrete  phenomenon,  but  of  enriching 
ft,  with  the  joint  perspective,  the  significance,  the  ex- 
j)ressiveness,  of  all  other  things  beside.  What  broad- 
cast light  he  enjoys!  —  that  scholar,  confronted  with 
the  sea-shell,  for  instance,  or  with  some  enigma  of  hered- 
ity in  himself  or  another,  with  some  condition  of  a 
particular  soul,  in  circumstances  which  may  never  pre- 
cisely so  occur  again ;  in  the  contemplation  of  that  sin- 
gle phenomenon,  or  object,  or  situation.  He  not  only 
sees,  but  understands  (thereby  only  seeing  the  more) 
and  will,  therefore,  also  remember.  The  significance 
of  the  particular  object  he  will  retain,  by  use  of  his  in- 
tellectual apparatus  of  notion  and  general  law,  as,  to 
use  Plato's  own  figure,  fluid  matter  may  be  retained  in 
vessels,  not  indeed  of  unbaked  clay,  but  of  alabaster 
or  bronze.  So  much  by  way  of  apology  for  general 
ideas  —  abstruse,  or  intangible,  or  dry  and  seedy  and 
wooden,  as  we  may  sometimes  think  them.    ^ 


go    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

Now  in  criticizing  this  apology  of  Pater  for 
Plato's  dialectic  I  would  not  fall,  as  some  have 
fallen,  into  the  opposite  and  no  less  erroneous 
extreme.  To  represent  Plato  as  an  enemy  of  the 
decent  and  comely  things  of  life,  as  an  iconoclast 
of  art  and  poetry  and  music  in  themselves,  would 
be  to  forget  some  of  the  great  passages  in  his 
Republic  and  other  dialogues,  in  which  the  prac- 
tical effect  of  beautiful  things  upon  conduct  is 
largely  recognized,  and  in  which  beauty  in  the 
abstract  is  placed  by  the  side  of  the  true  and  the 
good  in  the  supreme  trinity  of  ideas.  I  would 
even  admit  that  much  of  what  Pater  says  in 
regard  to  Plato's  conception  of  beauty  is  sound 
and  worthy  of  emphasis.  He  has  done  well  in 
drawing  out  the  element  of  discipline  in  the 
Platonic  aesthetics  —  the  value  of  the  capacity 
for  correction,  of  patience,  of  crafty  reserve,  of 
intellectual  astringency,  which  Plato  demanded 
of  the  poet  and  the  musician  and  of  every  true 
citizen  of  the  ideal  Republic.  Plato,  as  Pater 
rightly  observes,  was  of  all  men  faithful  to  the  old 
Greek  saying.  Beauty  is  hard  to  attain.  These 
aspects  of  art  and  of  beautiful  living  never  more 
than  to-day  needed  to  be  recognized  and  incul- 
cated. But  withal  Pater's  final  interpretation  of 
Plato  in  these  matters  is  fundamentally  wrong, 
and  ends  in  a  creed  which  Plato  would  have  re- 
jected with  utter  indignation.  To  recommend 
the  pursuit  of  ideas  for  the  sake  of  lending 


WALTER   PATER  91 

piquancy  to  the  phenomenal,  to  use  the  intellect- 
ual appliratus  in  order  to  enhance  the  signi- 
ficance of  the  particular  object,  to  undergo  phil- 
osophical discipline  for  the  purpose  of  adding 
zest  to  sensuous  pleasure,  in  a  word  to  make  truth 
.the  servant  of  beauty,  and  goodness  the  servant 
of  the  body,  is  to  uphold  a  doctrine  essentially 
and  uncompromisingly  the  contrary  of  every- 
thing that  Plato  believed  and  held  sacred.  To 
follow  such  a  course,  however  purely  and  aus- 
terely beauty  may  be  conceived,  is,  as  Plato  says, 
to  be  yJTTOiv  Twv  Kakwv,  the  subject  of  beautiful 
things  and  not  their  master.  Plato  taught  that 
the  perception  of  beauty  in  the  particular  object 
was  one  of  the  means  by  which  a  man  might  rise 
to  contemplation  of  the  idea  of  beauty  in  the  in- 
"tellectual  world,  and  wherever  he  saw  the  danger 
of  inverting  this  order,  as  Pater  and  many  other 
self-styled  Platonists  have  inverted  it,  he  could 
speak  of  art  with  all  the  austerity  of  a  Puritan. 
There  is  no  sentence  in  the  dialogues  that  cuts 
more  deeply  into  the  heart  of  his  philosophy  than 
the  foreboding  exclamation : ' '  When  any  one  pre- 
fers beauty  to  virtue,  what  is  this  but  the  real  and 
utter  dishonour  of  the  soul?" 

From  the  consideration  of  Plato  and  Platonism 
we  turn  naturally  to  the  greatest  of  Pater's 
works,  Marius  the  Epicurean,  and  here  again  we 
are  confronted  by  a  false  interpretation  of  one  of 
the  critical  moments  of  history.  The  theme  of 


92    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

Marius,  I  need  scarcely  say,  is  the  life  of  a  young 
Italian  who,  in  the  age  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  is 
searching  for  some  principle  of  conduct  amid  the 
dissolution  of  all  traditional  laws,  for  the  peace 
which  his  troubled  heart  craves  and  cannot  dis- 
cern. He  sees  the  world  about  him,  the  world  at 
least  that  has  outgrown  the  ancestral  belief  in  the 
gods  and  has  not  sunk  into  frivolity  or  sullen 
scepticism,  divided  between  the  two  sects  of  the 
Epicureans  and  the  Stoics,  and  the  larger  part  of 
the  story  is  really  a  disquisition  on  the  effect  of 
these  opposed  philosophies  upon  the  human  soul. 
Much  of  this  is  subtly  conceived,  and  especially 
the  adaptation  of  the  legend  of  Cupid  and  Psyche 
from  the  Golden  Book  of  Apuleius,  and  the  long 
discourse  of  Marcus  AureHus  contrived  with 
delicate  adjustment  from  the  Meditations,  are 
among  the  rare  things  of  literature;  although 
even  here  there  is  a  certain  taint,  an  insinuating 
betrayal  of  the  truth,  in  the  factitious  charms 
lent  to  these  philosophies.  Apuleius  may  have 
been,  in  a  sense,  decadent,  but  he  was  not  lan- 
guorous as  Pater  presents  him  in  translation,  and 
Marcus  Aurelius  is  in  expression  crabbed  and 
scholastic  and  very  far  from  the  smooth  periods  of 
his  imitator.  In  his  hesitancy  between  these  two 
philosophies  Marius  is  revolted  by  the  indiffer- 
ence of  the  Emperor  to  the  sufferings  of  the  world, 
and  leans  towards  a  kind  of  sentimental  and 
chastened  Epicureanism.    At  the  last,  however, 


WALTER   PATER  93 

he  is  introduced  into  the  home  of  a  Christian 
family  hving  outside  of  Rome,  is  fascinated  by 
the  purity  and  decorum  of  their  Hves,  and  is  him- 
self in  the  way  of  conversion,  when,  after  the  man- 
ner of  romantic  heroes,  he  fades  out  of  existence : 

The  people  around  his  bed  were  praying  fervently  — 
Ahi!  Abi!  Anima  Christiana!  In  the  moments  of  his 
extreme  helplessness  their  mystic  bread  had  been 
placed,  had  descended  like  a  snow-flake  from  the  sky, 
between  his  lips.  Gentle  fingers  had  applied  to  hands 
and  feet,  to  all  those  old  passage-ways  of  the  senses, 
through  which  the  world  had  come  and  gone  for  him, 
now  so  dim  and  obstructed,  a  medicinable  oil. 

So  he  dies  the  death  of  the  soul  that  is  naturally 
Christian,  finding  in  the  grace  of  these  tender 
ministrations  the  peace  so  long  desired  and 
missed.  In  this  choice  of  Epicureanism  instead  of 
the  harsher  Stoic  creed  as  a  preparation  for  Christ- 
ian faith,  Pater,  I  think,  shows  a  true  knowledge 
of  the  human  heart.  Pascal,  it  will  be  remembered, 
found  himself  fifteen  centuries  later  face  to  face 
with  the  same  contrasted  tenets  of  Epicurus  and 
'Zeno  which  were  dividing  the  minds  of  Europe, 
which  are  indeed  the  expression  of  the  two  main 
tendencies  not  of  one  time  but  of  all  times  of 
those  who  attempt  to  stop  in  a  religious  philoso- 
phy just  short  of  religion;  and  Pascal,  too,  saw 
that  the  step  from  Epicureanism  to  Christianity 
was  easier  than  from  Stoicism.  For  the  mind  that 
craves  unity  and  the  resting-place  of  some  event- 


94    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

ual  calm  may  be  deceived  by  the  naturalistic 
pantheism  of  the  Stoic  creed  and,  so  to  speak,  be- 
numbed into  a  dull  acquiescence,  whereas  from 
the  desolation  of  the  Epicurean  flux  it  is  more 
likely  to  be  driven  into  the  supernatural  unity  of 
religion,  while  holding  the  world  as  a  place  of 
illusory  mutation.  So  far  Pater,  in  his  account  of 
the  relation  of  the  Pagan  philosophies  and  Christ- 
ianity, was  psychologically  right;  but  his  por- 
trayal of  Christianity  itself  one  is  compelled  to 
condemn  in  the  same  terms  as  his  portrayal  of 
Platonism.  Read  the  story  of  Marius  at  the  home 
of  the  Christian  Cecilia  and  at  the  celebration  of 
the  mass,  and  you  will  feel  that  here  is  no  picture 
of  a  militant  faith  in  preparation  for  the  conquest 
of  the  world,  of  a  sect  at  death  grips  with  a  whole 
civilization  and  girding  itself  for  moral  regenera- 
tion, but  the  report  of  a  pleasant  scene  where  the 
eye  is  charmed  and  the  ear  soothed  by  the  same 
chaste  and  languid  loveliness  that  seemed  to 
Pater  to  rule  in  Sparta  and  the  ideal  city  of 
Plato.  "Some  transforming  spirit  was  at  work," 
he  writes  of  the  Christian  life,  "to  harmonize 
contrasts,  to  deepen  expression  —  a  spirit  which, 
in  its  dealing  with  the  elements  of  ancient  life, 
was  guided  by  a  wonderful  tact  of  selection, 
exclusion,  juxtaposition,  begetting  thereby  a 
unique  effect  of  freshness,  a  grave  yet  wholesome 
beauty."  And  in  his  dreams  Marius  is  repre- 
sented as  conjuring  up  the  "nights  of  the  beautiful 


WALTER   PATER  95 

house  of  Cecilia,  its  lights  and  flowers,  of  Cecilia 
herself  moving  among  the  lilies."  No  doubt  it 
would  be  false,  as  Pater  asserts  it  would  be,  to  set 
over  "against  that  divine  urbanity  and  modera- 
tion the  old  error  of  Montanus"  (Montanism,  it 
may  be  observed  by  the  way,  was  at  that  date 
quite  young,  but  no  matter,  in  the  romantic  con- 
vention everything  must  be  "old")  — it  would  be 
false,  I  say,  to  set  up  as  the  complete  Christian 
ideal  the  "fanatical  revolt"  of  Montanus,  "sour, 
falsely  anti-mundane,  ever  with  an  air  of  ascetic 
affectation,  and  a  bigoted  distaste  in  particular 
for  all  the  peculiar  graces  of  womanhood."  It  is 
well  to  avoid  extremes  in  either  direction.  Yet  if 
choice  had  to  be  made  between  the  sweet  volup- 
tuousness of  religion  as  it  appeared  to  Marius  and 
the  moral  rigour  of  Tertullian,  the  great  Montan- 
ist  preacher  who  was  contemporary  with  Marius, 
it  would  not  be  hard  to  say  on  which  side  lay  the 
real  Christianity  of  the  second  century.  Against 
Pater's  "elegance  of  sanctity,"  as  he  calls  it,  a 
Christian  might  exclaim  with  Tertullian  that 
"  truth  is  not  on  the  surface  but  in  the  inmost 
heart  (non  in  super ficie  est  sed  in  medullis).'" 
Pater,  borrowing  the  phrase  from  Tertullian,  de- 
scribes the  death  of  Marius  as  that  of  a  soul  natur- 
ally Christian.  Beside  that  picture  of  a  soul  daint- 
ily dreaming  itself  into  eternity  it  is  enlightening 
to  set  the  original  apostrophe  of  Tertullian  him- 
self to  the  anima  naturaliter  Christiana : 


96    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

But  I  summon  thee,  not  such  as  when  formed  in 
schools,  trained  in  libraries,  fed  in  Attic  academies  and 
porches,  thou  blurtest  forth  wisdom  —  I  address  thee 
simple,  and  rude,  and  uncultured,  and  untaught,  such 
as  they  possess  who  possess  thee  and  nothing  else;  the 
bare  soul  from  the  road,  the  street,  the  weaver's  shop. 

The  simple  fact  is  that  in  Marius  we  have  no 
real  conversion  from  Epicureanism  to  religion, 
no  Christianity  at  all  as  it  would  have  been 
recognized  by  St.  Paul  or  St.  Augustine,  but 
only  another  manifestation  of  that  aestheticism 
which  Pater  sucked  from  the  romantic  school  of 
his  century  and  disguised  in  the  phraseology 
of  ancient  faith.  To  write  thus  was  to  betray 
Christianity  with  a  kiss. 

V  In  the  third  of  Pater's  major  works.  The 
Renaissance,  there  is  again  a  reading  of  Paterism 
into  the  past,  but  without  the  perversion  of  spirit 
and  without  the  offensiveness  that  some  may  feel 
in  his  treatment  of  Platonism  and  Christianity. 
Not  a  little  of  the  romanticism  from  which  Pater 
drew  his  philosophy  may  be  traced  back  to  the 
Italy  of  Botticelli  and  Leonardo  da  Vinci ;  but  the 
tone,  the  energy,  the  ethos,  are  changed.  The 
nature  of  the  change  cannot  be  better  displayed 
than  in  the  famous  description  of  La  Gioconda, 
which,  if  it  may  seem  too  familiar  for  quotation, 
is  too  characteristic  of  Pater  to  be  omitted ;  as  in- 
deed the  whole  essay  on  Leonardo  may  be  taken  as 
the  subtlest  expression  of  his  genius: 


WALTER   PATER  97 

La  Gioconda  [he  writes  of  the  portrait  now,  alas,  lost] 
is,  in  the  truest  sense,  Leonardo's  masterpiece.  .  .  .  We 
all  know  the  face  and  hands  of  the  figure,  set  in  its  mar- 
ble chair,  in  that  circle  of  fantastic  rocks,  as  in  some 
faint  light  under  sea.  .  .  .  The  presence  that  rose  thus 
so  strangely  beside  the  waters,  is  expressive  of  what  in 
the  ways  of  a  thousand  years  men  had  come  to  desire. 
Hers  is  the  head  upon  which  all  "the  ends  of  the  world  are 
come,"  and  the  eyelids  are  a  little  weary.  It  is  a  beauty 
wrought  out  from  within  upon  the  flesh,  the  deposit, 
little  cell  by  cell,  of  strange  thoughts  and  fantastic  rev- 
eries and  exquisite  passions.  Set  it  for  a  moment  be- 
side one  of  those  white  Greek  goddesses  or  beautiful 
women  of  antiquity,  and  how  would  they  be  troubled 
by  this  beauty,  into  which  the  soul  with  all  its  maladies 
has  passed!  All  the  thoughts  and  experience  of  the 
world  have  etched  and  moulded  there,  in  that  which 
they  have  of  power  to  refine  and  make  expressive  the 
outward  form,  the  animalism  of  Greece,  the  lust  of 
Rome,  the  mysticism  of  the  middle  age  with  its  spirit- 
ual ambition  and  imaginative  loves,  the  return  of  the 
Pagan  world,  the  sins  of  the  Borgias.  She  is  older  than 
the  rocks  among  which  she  sits;  like  the  vampire,  she 
has  been  dead  many  times,  and  learned  the  secrets  of 
the  grave ;  and  has  been  a  diver  in  deep  seas,  and  keeps 
their  fallen  day  about  her;  and  trafficked  for  strange 
webs  with  Eastern  merchants;  and,  as  Leda,  was  the 
mother  of  Helen  of  Troy,  and,  as  Saint  Anne,  the  mo- 
ther of  Mary;  and  all  this  has  been  to  her  but  as  the 
sound  of  lyres  and  flutes,  and  lives  only  in  the  delicacy 
with  which  it  has  moulded  the  changing  lineaments,  and 
tinged  the  eyelids  and  the  hands. 

Now  I  shall  not  criticize  this  famous  passage 
for  its  treatment  of  plain  facts.  Any  one  who 
cares  to  see  how  far  Pater  has  departed  from  the 


gS    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

inconveniences  of  history  may  consult  the  mono- 
graph of  M.  Salomon  Reinach  in  Number  2  of  the 
Bulletin  des  Musees  de  France  for  1909.  And  after 
all  Pater  was  not  dealing  with  facts,  but  with 
emotions;  as  a  "lover  of  strange  souls,"  to  use  his 
own  phrase,  he  was  analyzing  the  impression 
made  upon  him  by  this  picture,  and  trying  to 
reach  through  it  a  definition  of  the  chief  elements 
of  Leonardo's  genius.  Yet  viewed  even  in  that 
light  the  description  rings  false  —  not  so  false  as 
his  interpretations  of  Platonism  and  Christianity, 
but  still  subtly  perversive  of  the  truth.  It  may  be 
true  in  a  way  that  the  genius  of  Leonardo,  as 
Goethe  said,  had  "thought  itself  weary  {miide 
sich  gedacht)'';  but  the  deadly  and  deliberate  lan- 
gour  that  trails  through  the  lines  of  Pater  —  not, 
I  admit,  without  its  own  ambiguous  and  troub- 
ling beauty  —  is  something  essentially  different 
from  even  the  most  ambiguous  forms  of  Leon- 
ardo's art.  And  whatever  may  have  been  the  sins 
of  Leonardo  in  the  flesh,  and  whatever  may  have 
been  his  intellectual  wanderings  or  indifferences, 
I  doubt  if  he  would  have  understood  that  strange 
and  frequent  identification  among  the  romantics 
of  the  soul  and  disease.  Into  the  face  of  Mona 
Lisa,  says  Pater,  "the  soul  with  all  its  maladies 
has  passed ! "  as  if  health  were  incompatible  with 
the  possession  of  a  soul.  One  suspects  that  the 
maladies  which  Pater  had  in  mind  —  and  he 
echoes  the  repeated  boasting  of  his  school  that 


WALTER   PATER  99 

their  weakness  and  impotence  were  a  sign  of 
spiritual  preeminence  —  one  suspects  that  these 
romantic  maladies  had  quite  another  source  than 
excess  of  soul.  This  again  is  Paterism  masquer- 
ading under  a  great  name  of  the  past.  \ 
The  simple  truth  is  that  Pater  was  in  no  proper  ! 
sense  of  the  word  a  critic.  He  did  not  on  the  one 
hand  from  his  own  fixed  point  of  view  judge  the 
great  movements  of  history  and  the  great  artists 
in  their  reality;  nor  on  the  other  hand  did  he 
show  any  dexterity  in  changing  his  own  point 
of  view  and  entering  sympathetically  into  other  \ 
moods  than  his  own.  To  him  history  was  only 
an  extension  of  his  own  Ego,  and  he  saw  himself ' 
whithersoever  he  turned  his  eyes.  The  result 
may  be  something  greater  than  criticism  — 
though  this  I  should  myself  deny  —  it  is  cer- 
tainly something  different  from  criticism.  To 
form  any  just  estimate  of  Pater's  work,  then,  we 
must  forget  the  critical  form  in  which  so  much  of 
his  writing  is  couched  and  regard  the  substance 
of  his  own  philosophy  apart  from  any  apparent 
relation  to  the  period  or  person  to  which  it  is 
transferred.  And  here  we  are  aided  by  the  sin- 
gular consistency  of  his  nature.  There  is  no  need 
with  Pater,  as  happens  with  most  other  men,  es- 
pecially with  those  who  treat  their  themes  his- 
torically, to  distinguish  between  what  is  his  own 
and  what  he  has  taken  up  from  other  sources; 
nor  is  the  problem  complicated  by  any  change  in 


100    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

point  of  view  as  he  passed  from  one  period  of  his 
career  to  another  or  from  influence  to  influence. 
All  is  of  a  piece,  and  all  is  the  perfectly  logi- 
cal outgrowth  of  a  single  attitude  towards  the 
world. 

And  this  we  see  in  his  life  itself  as  clearly  as  in 
his  writings.  Walter  Horatio  Pater  was  born  at 
Shad  well,  between  Wapping  and  Stepney,  in 
1839.  His  father,  a  physician  who  had  been  born 
in  America,  died  while  Walter  was  a  young  child, 
and  the  family  moved  to  an  old  house  with  a 
large  garden  at  Enfield  —  the  pleasant  suburb 
where  just  a  few  years  earlier  the  Clarkes  describe 
"the  most  enchanting  walks"  which  Charles 
and  Mary  Lamb  used  to  take  with  them  "in  all 
directions  of  the  lovely  neighbourhood,"  but 
where  Lamb  called  himself  whimsically  "a  stub- 
born Eloisa  in  this  detestable  paraclete."  There 
is  a  delicately  wrought  study  of  Pater's,  called 
The  Child  in  the  House,  which  shows,  if  we  may 
accept  it  as  partly  autobiographical,  the  influ- 
ences that  surrounded  these  years  and  the  tem- 
perament of  the  man  already  marked  in  the  boy. 
He  speaks  of  the  rapid  growth  in  him  "of  a  cer- 
tain capacity  of  fascination  by  bright  colour  and 
choice  form  —  the  sweet  curvings,  for  instance, 
of  the  lips  of  those  who  seemed  to  him  comely 
persons,  modulated  in  such  delicate  unison  to  the 
things  they  said  or  sang,  —  marking  early  the 
activity  in  him  of  a  more  than  customary  sensu- 


WALTER   PATER  loi 

QUSjO^S.  'the  lust  of  the  eye,'  as  the  Preacher 
says,  which  might  lead  him,  one  day,  how  far!" 
All  these  impressions  are  subdued  in  his  memory 
to  a  passive  alertness,  and  such  they  no  doubt 
were  actually  in  the  boy's  experience.  "So  he 
yielded  himself  to  these  things,  to  be  played  upon 
by  them  like  a  musical  instrument,  and  began  to 
note  with  deepening  watchfulness,  but  always 
with  some  puzzled,  unutterable  longing  in  his 
enjoyment,  the  phases  of  the  seasons  and  of  the 
growing  or  waning  day,  down  even  to  the  shad- 
owy changes  wrought  on  bare  wall  or  ceiling." 
The  rapture  of  the  elusive  moment,  the  econom- 
ical indulgence  of  the  senses,  the  feeling  and 
thought  finely  responsive  to  the  fair  things  of  the 
world,  were,  it  should  seem,  born  in  him;  and  in 
the  end  these  were  his  deliberate  philosophy. 

In  1858  Pater  went  up  to  Oxford,  and  at  Ox- 
ford, except  for  a  period  of  eight  years  in  London, 
he  resided  until  his  death  in  1894.  He  first  en- 
tered Queen's  College,  but  in  1864  was  elected 
to  a  Fellowship  at  Brasenose,  with  which  college 
he  was  henceforth  identified,  although  he  had 
also  a  home  outside  of  the  collegiate  walls.  His 
existence  now  took  on  the  colour  it  was  to  main- 
tain until  the  end.  Brasenose  itself  is  described 
by  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson,  from  whom  I  have  taken 
most  of  these  details  of  Pater's  life,  as  "one  of 
the  sternest  and  severest  in  aspect  of  Oxford  col- 
leges": 

UBP.ARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  GALlfCRNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


102     THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

It  has  no  grove  or  pleasaunce  to  frame  its  sombre 
antiquity  in  a  setting  of  colour  and  tender  freshness. 
Its  black  and  blistered  front  looks  out  on  a  little  piazza 
occupied  by  the  stately  mouldering  dome  of  the  Rad- 
cliflfe  Library;  beyond  is  the  solid  front  of  Hertford,  and 
the  quaint  pseudo-Gothic  court  of  All  Souls.  To  the 
north  lies  a  dark  lane,  over  the  venerable  wall  of  which 
looms  the  huge  chestnut  of  Exeter,  full  in  spring  of  stiff 
white  spires  of  heavy-scented  bloom.  To  the  south  a 
dignified  modern  wing,  built  long  after  Pater's  election, 
overlooks  the  bustling  High  Street.  To  the  west  the 
college  lies  back  to  back  with  the  gloomy  and  austere 
courts  of  Lincoln.  There  is  no  sense  of  space,  of  leisure- 
liness,  of  ornament,  about  the  place;  it  rather  looks  like 
a  fortress  of  study. 

Something  of  the  austere  character  of  the  col- 
lege passed  into  Pater's  own  ways  of  living.  His 
rooms  were  small  and  furnished  with  a  taste  that 
might  be  called  parsimoniously  aesthetic.  They 
were  "painted  in  greenish  white,  and  hung  with 
three  or  four  line-engravings."  A  few  Greek  coins 
were  his  chief  delight,  and  he  used  also  to  keep 
before  him  a  vase  of  dried  rose-leaves  for  their 
colour  and  scent.  His  habits  were  singularly  quiet 
and  regular.  Although  he  was  always  easily  ap- 
proached, and  to  greet  a  guest  would  rise  from 
the  midst  of  one  of  his  most  complicated  sen- 
tences without  the  least  irritation,  yet  he  mixed 
little  in  general  society  and  took  small  part  in  the 
college  routine.  As  tutor  and  lecturer  he  per- 
formed his  duties  punctiliously,  but  with  per- 
sonal reserve  and  without  enthusiasm.    So  far  as 


WALTER   PATER  103 

he  shared  in  the  discipline  of  the  institution  he 
was  strict  and  even  excitable,  and  the  story  is 
told  that  once,  having  to  quell  a  bit  of  under- 
graduate rowdyism,  he  turned  the  hose  into  the 
offender's  bedroom  to  such  good  effect  that  he 
had  afterwards  to  allow  the  inmate  to  sleep  out 
of  bounds.  With  strangers  he  was  precise  and  re- 
served, not  without  a  leaven  of  paradox  in  his 
conversation  which  often  led  to  misunderstand- 
ings; but  it  may  be  observed  here  emphatically 
that  the  rumours  of  his  morbid  immorality  are 
entirely  unfounded.  In  the  society  of  intimate 
friends  he  showed  a  sense  of  humour  and  an  in- 
terest in  trivial  things  which  would  not  be  ex- 
pected from  his  manner  of  writing.  Blithe  is  one 
of  his  favourite  words,  and  those  who  knew  him 
well  speak  of  a  certain  blitheness  —  "blitheness 
and  repose"  —  in  his  manner;  yet  withal  the  last 
impression  he  seems  to  have  made  was  that  of  a 
man  a  little  fatigued.  "Could  he  have  foreseen 
the  weariness  of  the  way!"  he  said  of  one  of  his 
heroes,  and  that  feeling  of  weariness,  of  futility 
in  the  hopes  and  acquisitions  of  life,  lay  always, 
one  thinks,  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart.  "The 
only  attitude  I  ever  observed  in  Pater,"  wrote  a 
friend,  "the  only  mood  I  saw  him  in,  was  a  sort 
of  weary  courtesy  with  which  he  used  to  treat  me, 
with  somehow  a  deep  kindness  shining  through." 
This,  too,  was  the  picture  he  presented  to  those 
who  saw  him  walking,  with  bowed  head  and,  in 


104    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

later  years,  a  slight  hesitation  in  his  steps.  He  is 
said  to  have  had  the  appearance  of  a  retired  mili- 
tary officer,  but  his  complexion  is  described  as 
having  the  pallor  of  old  ivory. 

He  was  not  a  laborious  scholar;  he  was  not 
even  a  great  reader  of  books,  and  in  later  years 
he  confined  himself  almost  exclusively  to  Plato 
and  the  Bible  and  the  few  other  masterpieces 
which  gave  him  the  intellectual  and  artistic  sus- 
tenance he  craved.  His  own  writing  was  slow 
and  painful ;  it  was  his  habit  to  write  on  alternate 
lines  of  ruled  paper,  leaving  space  for  revision, 
and  often  copying  out  a  composition  more  than 
once  and  even  having  it  privately  set  up  in  type 
so  that  he  might  judge  better  its  effect.  His 
work  in  fact  was  only  one  aspect  or  expression  of 
that  art  of  life  which  he  seems  to  have  practised 
from  youth,  whether  it  was  in  its  origin  a  delib- 
erate mental  choice  or,  more  likely,  the  instinct- 
ive prompting  of  his  temperament  which  was 
afterwards  reinforced  by  reading  and  observa- 
tion —  an  art  made  up  of  timidity  and  persist- 
ence and  lucid  self-interrogation,  seeking  its  ex- 
quisite satisfactions  more  in  what  it  renounced 
than  in  what  it  appropriated  from  the  world's 
ambiguous  gifts  and  pleasures. 

If  we  search  for  the  sources  of  his  philosophy, 
apart  from  the  original  character  of  the  man 
himself,  we  shall  find  them  without  difficulty. 
He  was  one  of  those  on  whom  Goethe's  ideal  of 


WALTER   PATER  105 

an  artistically  rounded  culture  early  imposed 
itself,  and  to  this  model  he  later  added  the  en- 
thusiasm and  the  "divinatory  power  over  the 
Hellenic  world  "  of  Goethe's  master,  Winckel- 
mannr"~Among  English  writers  he  himself  would 
probably  have  ascribed  the  chief  influence  upon 
him  to  Ruskin,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  I  suspect 
that  the  more  dominating  personal  influence  came 
from  another  and  more  insinuating  mind — from 
one  who  meets  us  at  every  turn  as  we  attempt 
to  trace  the  artistic  impulses  of  the  later  nine- 
teenth century,  and  who  was,  perhaps,  the  most 
perfect  type  that  England  has  known  of  the  ro- 
mantic temperament  turned  purely  to  art.  I  do 
not  certainly  know  that  Pater  ever  met  Rossetti 
in  the  flesh,  but  he  recognized  that  great  and  sad 
genius  as  one  of  his  teachers.  William  Sharp 
("  Fiona  Macleod")  knew  Rossetti  as  well  as  he 
knew  Pater,  and  he  once  wrote  to  Pater  in  re- 
gard to  these  subtle  relationships : 

Years  ago,  in  Oxford,  how  often  we  talked  these  mat- 
ters over!  I  have  often  recalled  one  evening,  in  par- 
ticular, often  recollected  certain  words  of  yours:  and 
never  more  keenly  than  when  I  have  associated  them 
with  the  early  work  of  Rossetti,  in  both  arts,  but  pre- 
eminently in  painting:  "To  my  mind  Rossetti  is  the 
most  significant  man  among  us.  More  torches  will  be  lit 
from  his  flame  —  or  torches  lit  at  his  flame  —  than  per- 
haps even  enthusiasts  like  yourself  imagine." 

But  however  Pater  may  seem  to  have  lighted 
his  torch  at  Rossetti's  flame,  we  must  not  over- 


io6    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

look  the  strong  impersonal  influence  that  eman- 
ated from  the  memories  and  the  very  stones  of 
'Oxford.  We  all  know  Matthew  Arnold's  apos- 
trophe to  the  "home  of  lost  causes,  and  forsaken 
beliefs,  and  unpopular  names,  and  impossible 
loyalties";  to  the  dream-city  that  "lies,  spread- 
ing her  gardens  to  the  moonlight,  and  whispering 
from  her  towers  the  last  enchantments  of  the 
Middle  Ages."  The  call  of  Oxford  is,  as  her  lover 
says,  to  beauty  and  to  higher  ideals;  but  there  is 
an  aspect  of  her  appeal  which  is  not  without  its 
fascinating  danger.  From  the  beginning  she  has 
been  the  home  of  secluded  causes  as  well  as  lost 
causes ;  she  has  stood  always  as  a  protest  against 
the  coarse  and  ephemeral  changes  of  civilization, 
but  she  has  maintained  this  centre  of  calm  too 
much  by  a  withdrawal  from  life  rather  than  by 
strong  control.  Hers  at  her  origin  was  the  ideal 
of  monasticism  and  of  faith  fleeing  the  world; 
her  loyalty  to  the  king  was  strongest  when  loy- 
alty meant  a  separation  from  the  great  powers  of 
political  expansion;  her  religious  revival  in  the 
nineteenth  century  not  only  was  the  desire  of  re- 
suscitating an  impossible  past,  but  sought  also 
to  sever  the  forms  of  worship  entirely  from  the  in- 
fluence of  the  State  and  of  the  people.  Certainly 
much  good  has  come  out  of  this  pride  of  seclu- 
sion and  waves  of  spiritual  force  have  continu- 
ally emanated  from  this  reservoir  of  memory; 
but  it  is  true  also  that  these    influences  have 


WALTER  PATER  107 

sometimes  ended  in  sterility  or  have  tended  to 
widen  rather  than  close  up  the  unfortunate  gap 
between  the  utilitarian  and  the  sentimental  phases 
of  English  life.  In  a  word,  they  have  been  too 
often  a  reinforcement  to  the  romantic  ideal  of  the 
imagination  as  a  worship  of  beauty  isolated  from, 
and  in  the  end  despised  by,  the  real  interests  of 
life,  and  too  seldom  a  reinforcement  of  the  classi- 
cal ideal  of  the  imagination  as  an  active  power  in 
life  itself.  The  very  contrast  of  the  enchanted 
towers  of  Oxford  with  the  hideous  chimneys  of 
one  of  England's  great  manufacturing  towns 
seems  to  give  to  the  university  an  atmosphere  of 
aesthetic  unreality.  Ideas  do  not  circulate  here 
as  they  do  in  a  university  like  that  of  Paris,  sit- 
uated at  the  heart  of  the  national  life,  and  in  too 
many  of  the  books  that  now  come  from  Oxford 
one  feels  the  breath  of  a  fine  traditional  culture 
that  has  somehow  every  excellent  quality  except 
vitality.  And  so  it  was  not  strange  to  see  the 
Oxford  Movement,  especially  so-called,  depart 
further  and  further  from  practical  and  intellectual 
realities  and  lose  itself  in  an  empty  and  stubborn 
ritualism.  Thought  is  the  greatest  marrer  of 
good  looks,  said  Oscar  Wilde,  and  that  is  why 
there  are  so  many  good-looking  young  curates  in 
England.  The  sestheticism  of  William  Morris 
and  Burne- Jones  was  a  conscious  revolt  from  the 
vapidity  of  the  later  stages  of  the  Oxford  Move- 
ment to  a  pure  and  Pagan  sensuousness.   Ros- 


t/ 


io8    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

setti  gave  body  and  passion  to  the  revolt,  and 
Pater,  following  in  their  steps,  lent  a  scholastic 
authority  to  their  artistic  achievements.  Pater- 
ism  might  without  great  injustice  be  defined  as 
the  quintessential  spirit  of  Oxford  emptied  of 
the  wholesome  intrusions  of  the  world  —  its 
pride  of  isolation  reduced  to  sterile  self-absorp- 
tion, its  enchantment  of  beauty  alembicated  into 
a  faint  Epicureanism,  its  discipline  of  learning 
changed  into  a  voluptuous  economy  of  sensa- 
tions, its  golden  calm  stagnated  into  languid  ele- 
gance. 

In  judging  Pater,  then,  we  must  not  come  to 
him  for  interpretive  or  constructive  criticism, 
constructive,  that  is,  as  based  on  a  correct  in- 
sight into  the  material  he  pretends  to  use,  but  for 
his  own  philosophy  of  life.  And  in  this  judge- 
ment two  things  are  to  be  taken  into  account:  on 
the  one  hand,  how  consistent  and  clear  he  was  in 
the  expression  of  this  philosophy  of  life,  and  on 
the  other  hand,  what  the  value  of  this  philoso- 
phy is  in  itself.  For  the  first  the  answer  is  all 
in  his  favour.  From  the  beginning  to  the  end,  as 
we  have  seen,  there  is  scarcely  a  discordant  note 
in  his  writing ;  whether  he  was  posing  as  an  inter- 
preter of  Plato  or  early  Christianity  or  the  Re- 
naissance, he  was  in  reality  exhibiting  only  him- 
self. It  is  true  that  in  his  essays  on  Wordsworth 
and  one  or  two  other  modern  writers  he  seems 
for  a  while  to  escape  from  the  magic  circle  of  him- 


WALTER   PATER  109 

self,  but  the  escape  is  more  apparent  than  real. 
So  much  for  his  consistency,  and  his  clearness  is 
no  less  complete.  More  than  once  he  gives  di- 
rect expression  to  his  philosophy,  nowhere  else 
so  explicitly  as  in  the  conclusion  to  his  volume 
on  The  Renaissance.  The  motto  of  that  chap- 
ter is  the  famous  saying  of  Heracleitus,  All  things 
are  in  a  state  of  flux  and  nothing  abides,  and  the 
chapter  itself  is  but  a  brief  exhortation  to  make 
the  most  of  our  human  life  amidst  this  endless 
and  ceaseless  mutation  of  which  we  are  ourselves 
an  ever-changing  element: 

The  service  of  philosophy,  of  speculative  culture, 
towards  the  human  spirit,  is  to  rouse,  to  startle  it  to  a 
life  of  constant  and  eager  observation.  Every  moment 
some  form  grows  perfect  in  hand  or  face;  some  tone  on 
the  hills  or  the  sea  is  choicer  than  the  rest ;  some  mood 
of  passion  or  insight  or  intellectual  excitement  is  irre- 
sistibly real  and  attractive  to  us,  —  for  that  moment 
only.  Not  the  fruit  of  experience,  but  experience  itself, 
is  the  end.  A  counted  number  of  pulses  only  is  given 
to  us  of  a  variegated,  dramatic  life.  How  may  we  see  in 
them  all  that  is  to  be  seen  in  them  by  the  finest  senses? 
How  shall  we  pass  most  swiftly  from  point  to  point,  and 
be  present  always  at  the  focus  where  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  vital  forces  unite  in  their  purest  energy? 

To  burn  always  with  this  hard,  gemlike  flame,  to  main- 
tain this  ecstasy,  is  success  in  life.  In  a  sense  it  might 
even  be  said  that  our  failure  is  to  form  habits:  for,  after 
all,  habit  is  relative  to  a  stereotyped  world,  and  mean- 
time it  is  only  the  roughness  of  the  eye  that  makes  any 
two  persons,  things,  situations,  seem  alike.  While  all 
melts  under  our  feet,  we  may  well  grasp  at  any  exquisite 


no    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

passion,  or  any  contribution  to  knowledge  that  seems 
By  a  lifted  horizon  to  set  the  spirit  free  for  a  moment,  or 
any  stirring  of  the  senses,  strange  dyes,  strange  colours, 
and  curious  odours,  or  work  of  the  artist's  hands,  or  the 
face  of  one's  friend. 

That  is  the  sum  of  Pater's  philosophy  as  it  is 
everywhere  implicitly  expressed  in  critical  essay 
or  fiction :  the  admonition  to  train  our  body  and 
mind  to  the  Jjighest  point  of  acuteness  so  as  to 
catch,  as  it  were,  each  fleeting  glimpse  of  beauty 
on  the  wing,  and  by  the  intensity  of  our  partici- 
pation to  compensate  for  the  insecurity  of  the 
world's  gifts;  in  a  word,  the  admonition  to  make  ' 
of  life  itself  an  art.  Now  we  ought,  I  think,  to  be 
grateful  first  of  all  to  any  one  who  recalls  to  us 
and  utters  in  manifold  ways  this  lesson  of  grace 
within  answering  to  grace  without.  Perhaps  no 
other  philosophy  to-day  has  so  completely  passed 
out  of  the  general  range  of  vision  as  this  doctrine 
of  the  art  of  living,  which  has  been  one  of  the 
guiding  principles  of  the  greatest  ages  of  the  past. 
This  is  not  to  say  that  our  lives  are  therefore  ne- 
cessarily aimless.  Exacting  ambitions  and  high 
purposes  we  may  follow  with  unflagging  zeal; 
it  is  possible  that  never  before  in  history  has  the 
individual  man  striven  more  keenly  for  some  goal 
which  he  saw  clearly  at  the  end  of  his  path — some 
possession  of  wealth  or  power  or  learning  or  virtue 
—  but  how  rarely  in  our  society  one  meets  the 
man  who  to  his  other  purposes  adds  the  design 


WALTER   PATER  xii 

of  making  his  life  itself  a  rounded  work  of  art, 
ordering  his  acts  and  manners  and  thoughts  and 
emotions  to  this  conscious  and  noble  end!  We 
are  too  hurried  for  this,  a  little  too  unbalanced  be- 
tween egotism  and  a  sentimental  humanitarian- 
ism,  a  little  too  uncertain,  despite  much  optimis- 
tic brag,  of  any  real  and  immediate  values  in 
life.  And  so  I  repeat  that  we  owe  gratitude  to 
Pater  for  recalling  us,  if  we  will  listen,  to  this  lost 
ideal.  And  there  is  much  also  to  commend  in  the 
method  he  proposes.  If  he  teaches  that  the  art  of 
life  is  to  train  our  emotional  nature,  like  a  well- 
trimmed  lamp,  to  burn  always  with  a  hard,  gem- 
like flame,  he  also  endlessly  reiterates  the  lesson 
that  this  joy  of  eager  observation  and  swift  re- 
sponse can  be  made  habitual  in  us  only  by  a 
severe  self-discipline  and  moderation.  Only  when 
the  senses  have  been  purified  and  sharpened  by  a 
certain  chastity  of  use,  only  when  the  mind  has 
been  exercised  by  a  certain  rigidity  of  application, 
do  we  become  fit  instruments  to  record  the  deli- 
cate impacts  of  evanescent  beauty.  In  his  essay 
on  Raphael,  one  of  the  soundest  of  his  critical 
estimates,  Pater  refers  to  the  saying  that  the  true 
artist  is  known  best  by  what  he  omits;  and  this, 
he  adds,  is  "because  the  whole  question  of  good 
taste  is  involved  precisely  in  such  jealous  omis- 
sion." No  one  has  seen  more  clearly  than  Pater 
that  virtue  is  not  acquired  by  a  rebound  from 
excess,  but  is  the  exquisite  flower  of  the  habit 


112     THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

of  moderation ;  and  in  this  sense  the  words  that 
he  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Raphael  might  be 
appHed  to  himself:  "  I  am  utterly  purposed  that  I 
will  not  offend." 

Yet  withal  the  account  with  Pater  cannot  stop 
here,  nor,  if  we  consider  the  fruit  of  his  teaching 
in  such  men  as  Oscar  Wilde,  can  we  admit  that  it 
was  altogether  without  offence.  His  error  was  not 
that  he  inculcated  the  art  of  life  at  all  seasons,  but 
that  his  sense  of  values  was  finally  wrong;  his 
philosophy  from  beginning  to  end  might  be  called 
by  a  rhetorician  a  kind  of  hysteron-proteron. 
And  this  was  manifest  in  his  attitude  to  the  three 
great  moments  of  history.  Thus  in  his  interpreta- 
tion of  Plato  we  have  seen  how  he  falsified  Plato's 
theory  and  use  of  facts  by  raising  beauty,  or 
aesthetic  pleasure,  above  truth  as  the  goal  to  be 
kept  in  sight.  Now  this  may  seem  a  slight  sin, 
when  in  extolling  the  one  nothing  is  intentionally 
taken  away  from  the  honour  of  the  other.  Pater 
would  even  say  that  as  truth  and  beauty  are  the 
same  it  makes  no  difference  which  of  them  you 
set  before  your  gaze;  and  in  this  he  would  have 
the  authority  of  many  eminent  predecessors.  Are 
we  not  all  fond  of  quoting  the  great  words  of 
Keats?  — 

"Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty,"  —  that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know. 

Perhaps  in  some  high  philosophical  realm  that  is 


WALTER   PATER  113 

the  case;  but  it  happens  that  in  practice  in  this 
mundane  sphere  the  ways  of  truth  and  beauty 
are  by  no  means  always  identical,  and  it  makes 
a  world  of  difTerence  where  you  come  out  accord- 
ing as  you  take  this  or  the  other  for  your  guide. 
I  have  been  struck  by  a  passage  in  one  of  the 
recently  published  Japanese  letters  of  Lafcadio 
Hearn  —  certainly  no  foe  to  romantic  beauty. 
"They  all  [the  romanticists]  sowed  a  crop  of 
dragon's  teeth,"  he  says.  "Preaching  without 
qualification  the  gospel  of  beauty  —  that  beauty 
is  truth  —  provoked  the  horrible  modern  answer 
of  Zolaism:  'Then  truth  must  be  beauty!'" 
Hearn  was  right:  the  sure  end  of  this  innocent- 
seeming  theory  was  decadence ;  the  inevitable  fol- 
lower of  Pater  was  Oscar  Wilde.  In  misinterpret- 
ing Plato,  Pater  also  misinterpreted  life. 

In  like  manner,  when  Pater  in  his  treatment  of 
Christianity  placed  emotional  satisfaction  before 
religious  duty,  he  really  missed  the  goal  of  happi- 
ness he  was  aiming  at.  The  old  Scotch  preacher 
Blair  pronounced  the  sure  answer  to  such  an  er- 
ror many  years  before  Paterism  existed :  "  To  aim 
at  a  constant  succession  of  high  and  vivid  sen- 
sations of  pleasure,  is  an  idea  of  happiness  al- 
together chimerical.  .  .  .  Instead  of  those  falla- 
cious hopes  of  perpetual  festivity,  with  which  the 
world  would  allure  us,  religion  confers  upon  us  a 
cheerful  tranquillity."  Nor  was  Pater's  fault  in 
regard  to  the  Renaissance  essentially  different 


114    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

in  its  consequences;  it  may  even  be  that  here 
where  his  temperament  would  seem  to  be  most 
at  home,  his  subtle  inversion  of  the  facts,  in  mak- 
ing beauty  and  pleasure  the  purpose  of  life  instead 
of  holding  them  the  reward  or  efflorescence  of  right 
living,  is  the  most  instructive  of  all.  Read  Pater's 
exquisitely  refined  pages  on  Leonardo  da  Vinci, 
with  their  constant  implication  that  beauty  is  a 
kind  of  malady  of  the  soul,  and  then  recall  the 
strong  young  soul  of  the  Renaissance  as  it  speaks, 
for  instance,  in  the  ringing  lines  of  Chapman: 

Give  me  a  spirit  that  on  this  life's  rough  sea 
Loves  t'  have  his  sails  fill'd  with  a  lusty  wind.  . . . 
There  is  no  danger  to  a  man  that  knows 
What  life  and  death  is  — 

recall  the  whole  magnificent  passage,  and  you 
will  see  why  Pater's  philosophy  leads  on  inevit- 
\  A^^y  to  weariness,  and  satiety,  and  impotence. 
\[  This  exaltation  of  beauty  above  truth,  and 
I  emotional  grace  above  duty,  and  fine  perception 
above  action,  this  insinuating  hedonism  which 
would  so  bravely  embrace  the  joy  of  the  moment, 
forgets  to  stay  itself  on  any  fixed  principle  outside 
of  itself,  and,  forgetting  this,  it  somehow  misses 
the  enduring  joy  of  the  world  and  empties  life 
of  true  values.  It  springs,  at  least  as  we  see 
it  manifest  in  these  latter  years,  from  the  sense 
of  an  exasperated  personality  submerged  in  the 
ceaseless  ebb  and  flow  of  things,  and  striving  des- 
perately to  cHng  to  the  shadows  as  they  speed  by 


WALTER   PATER  115 

and  thus  to  win  for  itself  an  emotion  of  power  and 
importance.  In  Platonism  and  Christianity  and, 
to  a  certain  extent,  in  the  Renaissance,  the  beauty 
and  joy  of  the  flux  of  nature  were  held  subordin- 
ate to  an  ideal  above  nature,  the  everlasting 
Spirit  that  moves  and  is  not  moved.  Because 
Pater  had  lost  from  his  soul  this  vision  of  the  in- 
finite, and  sought  to  deify  in  its  place  the  intense 
realization  of  the  flux  itself  as  the  end  of  life,  for 
that  reason  he  failed  to  comprehend  the  inner 
meaning  of  those  great  epochs,  and  became  in- 
stead one  of  the  leaders  of  romantic  aestheticism. 
Thus  it  is  that  we  cannot  finally  accept  Pater's 
philosophy  of  the  art  of  life,  notwithstanding  all 
that  may  be  said  in  its  favour;  that  even  his 
lesson  of  moderation  and  self-restraint,  much  as 
that  lesson  is  needed  to-day  and  always,  seems  at 
last  to  proceed  from  some  deep-seated  taint  of 
decaying  vitality  rather  than  from  conscious 
strength.  So  intimately  are  good  and  evil  min- 
gled together  in  human  ideals. 


FIONA   MACLEOD 


FIONA   MACLEOD 

The  writer  who  concealed  himself  under  the 
name  of  Fiona  Macleod  has  just  been  brought 
into  prominence  by  the  publication  of  a  complete 
edition  of  his  works  and  by  an  admirable 
biography  from  the  hand  of  his  wife.^  He  may 
seem  out  of  place  among  the  greater  forces  of 
romanticism,  yet  his  position  as  one  of  the  lead- 
ers of  revolt  against  certain  aspects  of  our  civiliz- 
ation gives  him  some  significance,  and  there  is, 
or  at  least  was,  a  mystery  about  his  double  and 
epicene  personality  which  piques  attention  and 
renders  him  curiously  symbolical  of  the  movement 
he  represented.  For  twelve  years,  until  his  death 
in  1905  permitted  the  revelation,  his  identity  with 
the  woman  of  the  Highlands  was  kept  secret  by 
the  small  circle  to  whom  it  was  known.  The  sit- 
uation had  a  comical  element  when  William 
Sharp,  as  chairman  of  the  Stage  Society,  brought 
out  one  of  the  plays  of  his  supposed  friend,  Fiona 
Macleod,  at  the  Globe  Theatre,  and  during  the 
rehearsals  chatted  with  his  Celtic  fellows  about 
play  and  author.  When  the  secret  of  Fiona's  exist- 
ence was  ended  there  rose  in  its  place  the  ques- 
tion of  Mr.  Sharp's  double  activity  —  for  all 

*  The  Writings  of  "  Fiona  Macleod."  Arranged  by  Mrs.  William 
Sharp.  Seven  volumes.    New  York:  Duffield  &  Co.  i90(>-io. 

William  Sharp  (Fiona  Macleod) :  A  Memoir,  Compiled  by  his  Wife, 
Elizabeth  A.  Sharp.  New  York:  DuSaeld  8c  Co.   1910. 


120    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

through  the  twelve  years  he  had  purposely  con- 
tinued his  critical  writing  under  his  own  name  — 
and  certain  amateur  psychologists  began  to  spread 
the  rumour  of  a  mysterious  dual  personality  in 
the  man,  as  if  he  had  really  possessed  two  souls, 
one  masculine  and  Saxon,  the  other  feminine  and 
Gaelic.  Mrs.  Sharp,  in  her  biography,  rather 
fosters  this  impression,  and  it  is  evident  that 
Sharp  liked  to  puzzle  himself  and  his  friends  by 
the  presumption  of  an  extraordinary  inspiration. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  nothing  at  all  super- 
natural or  even  very  strange  in  the  matter.  The 
wistful,  ghostly  vein  that  runs  through  the  works 
of  Fiona  Macleod  was  marked  in  William  Sharp 
from  a  child,  and  if  most  of  his  writing  before  he 
assumed  the  Gaelic  name  shows  the  ordinary 
qualities  of  Anglo-Saxon  London,  that  was  sim- 
ply because  he  wrote  for  the  market  what  the 
market  demanded. 

WiUiam  Sharp  was  born  at  Paisley  in  1855,  and 
was  in  childhood  very  delicate.  By  his  Highland 
nurse,  ^Barbara,  he  was  initiated  into  the  ji/ague 
legends  and  superstitions  of  the  Gael,  which  later 
yrere  to  form  the  speech  of  Fiona  Macleod,  and  to 
these  he  added  the  dreams  and  adventures  of  his 
9wn  brooding,  half-nurtured  soul.  Mrs.  Sharp 
tells  of  hearing  him  speak  often  of  a  gentle  White 
Lady  of  the  Woods  who  appeared  to  him  in  his 
childhood,  and  he  himself  in  a  letter  wrote  once  of 
this  haunting  vision,  thus: 


FIONA   MACLEOD  121 

For  I,  too,  have  my  dream,  my  memory  of  one  whom 
as  a  child  I  called  Star-Eyes,  and  whom  later  I  called 
"Baumorair-na-mara,"  the  Lady  of  the  Sea,  and  whom 
at  last  I  knew  to  be  no  other  than  the  woman  who  is  in 
the  heart  of  women.  I  was  not  more  than  seven  when 
one  day,  by  a  well,  near  a  sea-loch  in  Argyll,  just  as  I 
was  stooping  to  drink,  my  glancing  eyes  lit  on  a  tall 
woman  standing  among  a  mist  of  wild  hyacinths  under 
three  great  sycamores.  I  stood,  looking,  as  a  fawn  looks, 
wide-eyed,  unafraid.  She  did  not  speak,  but  she  smiled, 
and  because  of  the  love  and  beauty  in  her  eyes  I  ran  to 
her.  She  stooped  and  lifted  blueness  out  of  the  flowers, 
as  one  might  lift  foam  out  of  a  pool,  and  I  thought  she 
threw  it  over  me.  When  I  was  found  lying  among  the 
hyacinths  dazed,  and,  as  was  thought,  ill,  I  asked  eagerly 
after  the  lady  in  white,  and  with  hair  all  shiny-gold  like 
buttercups,  but  when  I  found  I  was  laughed  at,  or  at 
last,  when  I  passionately  persisted,  was  told  I  was  sun- 
dazed  and  had  been  dreaming,  I  said  no  more  —  but  I 
did  not  forget. 

Pretty  much  all  of  Fiona  Macleod's  poetry 
and  philosophy  is  in  that  brief  paragraph  —  the 
symbolic  vision  that  is  impressive  because  it 
r^eally  symbohzes  nothing;  the  notion. that  one 
becomes  spiritual  by  becoming  abstract,  as  in 
lifting  blueness  instead  of  something  blue;  the 
half-conscious  eroticism  in  the  merging  together 
of  nature  and  the  woman  who  is  in  the  heart  of 
women.  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  some 
dream  of  the  kind  did  not  actually  visit  the 
delicate  and  lonely  child,  whose  brain  was  filled 
with  the  inarticulate  stories  of  an  old  and  wan- 
dering   superstition.    In    later    years   vacations 


122    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

passed  in  the  western  Highlands  and  on  the 
Hebridean  islands  reinforced  his  imagination 
with  the  nature  myths  that  still  haunted  those 
remote  and  then  almost  untravelled  places.  He 
evidently  had  unusual  powers  of  sympathy  which 
unlocked  the  hearts  of  ancient  women  and  Gaelic- 
speaking  fishermen,  who,  in  the  evenings  before 
the  smouldering  peat-fires  or  in  herring-boats 
on  the  mist-haunted  seas,  told  him  legends  of 
Pagan  gods  still  secretly  feared  and  loved  amid 
the  practices  and  faith  of  Christianity,  and  of 
the  poets  and  seers  who  had  strange  kinship 
with  the  forces  of  nature. 

In  particular  he  came  to  love  the  island  of 
lona,  with  its  traditions  of  the  great  Columba 
who  had  sailed  thither  from  Ireland,  bringing  the 
Gospel  of  Christ  not  as  an  enemy  but  as  a  friend 
of  the  older  religion.  There  he  heard  from  a  young 
Hebridean  priest  and  from  others  the  prophecy  of 
the  days  when  lona  should  once  more  be  the 
centre  of  a  regenerating  force  which  was  to  sweep 
not  over  Scotland  alone  but  over  the  world,  de- 
scending this  time  as  "the  Divine  Womanhood 
upon  the  human  heart,"  and  bringing  the  long- 
desired  consummation  of  peace.  At  times  he 
writes  of  this  prophecy  as  if  he  accepted  it  almost 
literally,  though  one  suspects  he  was  thinking 
chiefly  of  the  "great  and  deep  spiritual  change," 
as  he  calls  it,  which  the  new  school  of  Celtic 
writers  were  to  introduce  into  civilization  by 


FIONA   MACLEOD  123 

their  confessedly  feminine  use  of  the  imagina- 
tion. 

On  that  island  he  also  became  acquainted  with 
an  old  fisherman,  Seumas  Macleod,  who  took  the 
child  of  seven  on  his  knee  one  day  and  made  him 
pray  to  "Her,"  the  spirit  woman  at  the  heart 
of  the  world.  Elsewhere  he  tells  of  coming  once 
as  a  boy  of  sixteen  upon  the  old  man  at  sunrise, 
standing  with  his  face  to  the  sea  and  with  his 
bonnet  removed  from  his  long  white  locks. 
When  the  boy  spoke  to  Seumas  (seeing  he  was 
not  "at  his  prayers"),  the  old  man  replied  sim- 
ply, in  Gaelic,  of  course:  "Every  morning  like 
this  I  take  my  hat  off  to  the  beauty  of  the  world." 
It  was,  one  suspects,  the  glancing  light  on  the 
waves  and  the  wind-blown  mists  about  lona,  more 
than  the  legendary  lore  of  the  spot,  that  affected 
the  boy.  There  is  a  story  of  a  "  man  who  went 
[from  lona]  to  the  mainland,  but  could  not  see 
to  plough,  because  the  brown  fallows  became 
waves  that  splashed  noisily  about  him.  The  same 
man  went  to  Canada,  and  got  work  in  a  great 
warehouse ;  but  among  the  bales  of  merchandise 
he  heard  the  singular  note  of  the  sandpiper,  and 
every  hour  the  sea-fowl  confused  him  with  their 
crying."  Something  like  that  is  the  history  of 
William  Sharp  himself. 

When  the  boy  was  twelve  years  old  his  parents 
moved  to  Glasgow,  and  he  was  sent  to  the  Acad- 
emy in  that  city.   In  1871  he  was  enrolled  as  a 


124    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

student  at  the  Glasgow  University,  where  he  re- 
mained for  two  years,  leaving  without  taking  a 
degree.  At  this  time,  and  indeed  all  through  his 
life,  he  had  a  voracious  but  unsystematic  appe- 
tite for  books,  for  night  after  night  reading  "far 
into  the  morning  hours  literature,  philosophy, 
poetry,  mysticism,  occultism,  magic,  mythology, 
folk-lore."  The  result  was  to  turn  him  from  the 
orthodox  Presbyterianism,  in  which  he  had  been 
brought  up,  to  a  vague  faith  in  some  truth 
glimpsed  fitfully  beneath  all  the  creeds  and  cults 
of  religion.  On  leaving  college  he  entered  the 
office  of  a  firm  of  Glasgow  lawyers.  Here  for  two 
years  he  is  said  to  have  allowed  himself  only  four 
hours  out  of  the  twenty-four  for  sleep,  burning 
away  his  strength,  not  on  the  law,  it  may  be  sup- 
posed, but  on  more  seductive  studies.  His  health, 
always  precarious,  broke  under  the  strain,  and 
he  was  shipped  off  to  Austraha.  The  new  world 
did  not  satisfy  him,  and  he  was  soon  back  in 
Scotland,  where  he  spent  a  year  of  idleness.  In 
1878  he  came  to  London  and  took  a  place  in  a 
bank;  but  literature  still  lured  him,  and  after 
a  while  he  threw  himself  on  his  pen  for  support 
and  gradually,  through  many  hardships  and  mo- 
ments of  despair,  won  for  himself  a  profitable  hold 
on  the  publishers.  Naturally,  as  a  servant  of  the 
press  he  wrote  what  the  readers  of  magazines  and 
popular  biographies  desired,  hiding  close  in  his 
heart  the  wayward  mysticism  and  grandiose  phil- 


FIONA   MACLEOD  125 

osophy  he  had  learned  from  nature.  Yet  those 
hidden  springs  of  inspiration  were  never  forgot- 
ten, and  in  his  intimate  letters  we  hear  continu- 
ally of  great  projected  epics  and  other  poems 
that  were  to  solve  the  riddles  of  life.  From  the 
specimens  of  these  suppressed  masterpieces  given 
by  Mrs.  Sharp  in  the  biography,  we  conjecture 
that  their  loss  to  the  world  is  not  deplorable.  For 
example: 

There  is  in  everything  an  undertone  .  .  . 

Those  clear  in  soul  are  also  clear  in  sight, 

And  recognise  in  a  white  cascade's  flash, 

The  roar  of  mountain  torrents,  and  the  wail 

Of  multitudinous  waves  on  barren  sands. 

The  song  of  skylark  at  the  flush  of  dawn, 

A  mayfield  all  ablaze  with  king-cups  gold. 

The  clamour  musical  of  culver  wings 

Beating  the  soft  air  of  a  dewy  dusk, 

The  crescent  moon  far  voyaging  thro'  dark  skies, 

And  Sirius  throbbing  in  the  distant  south, 

A  something  deeper  than  mere  audible 

And  visible  sensations;  for  they  see 

Not  only  pulsings  of  the  Master's  breath, 

The  workings  of  inevitable  Law, 

But  also  the  influences  subordinate 

And  spirit  actors  in  life's  unseen  side. 

One  glint  of  natu.re__may  unlock  a  soul. 

No  doubt  the  youthful  bard  and  his  confidante 
thought  he  was  uttering  some  startling  spiritual 
truth  and,  as  is  the  way  with  youthful  bards  and 
their  accomplices,  cursed  the  world  for  its  obsti- 
nate deafness.  As  a  matter  of  fact  that  sort  of 
^^iitheistic  revery  was  exasperatingly  easy  then, 


125    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

jWnd  now;  Wordsworth  and  Shelley  and  a  Httle 

I  contempt  for  reason  are  the  formula  responsible 
[for  a  stream  of  that  kind  of  thing  that  trickles 

I I  clammily  through  the  nineteenth  century.  For 
whatever  solid  basis  there  is  in  the  work  of  Fiona 
Macleod  we  must  thank  the  hard  prosaic  experi- 
ence of  William  Sharp,  which  gave  him  some  dis- 
cipline in  common  sense  and  kept  his  aspirations 
in  long  abeyance. 

Two  friendships  in  these  early  years  should 
not  be  forgotten.  As  a  boy  he  had  fallen  in 
love  with  his  cousin  Elizabeth,  and,  after  years 
of  waiting  and  despite  some  family  opposition, 
they  were  married.  If  she  was  not  precisely  the 
muse  of  Fiona  Macleod,  for  that  honour  belongs 
to  an  unnamed  woman  with  whom  he  became 
acquainted  later  in  life,  she  cherished  his  am- 
bitions and  responded  sympathetically  to  his 
dreams  of  a  Celtic  revival.  Another  friend,  who' 
influenced  him  profoundly,  was  the  figure  that 
looms  so  large  in  all  the  literary  history  of  the 
day,  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  then  a  broken  man 
secluding  himself  in  the  stealthy,  heavy-aired  re- 
treat he  had  made  for  himself  at  i6,  Cheyne 
Walk,  but  still  the  deus  prcesens  in  the  imag- 
inative world  in  which  Swinburne  and  Watts- 
Dunton  and  Walter  Pater  and  Philip  Bourke 
Marston  and  other  scented  souls  were  breathing 
dim  or  gorgeous  hopes.  The  first  book  that 
brought  general  recognition  to  Sharp  was   his 


FIONA    MACLEOD  127 

study  of  Rossetti,  and  years  afterwards,  In  a 
dedication  to  Walter  Pater  of  a  projected  new- 
edition,  which,  however,  he  never  finished,  he 
expressed  what  Rossetti  meant  to  them: 

'    V^e_are_all_seeking  a  lost  Eden.    This  ideal  Beauty 

that  we  catch  glTrnpses  of,  now  In  morning  loveliness, 

now  In  glooms  of  tragic  terror,  haunts  us  by  day  and 

night,  In  dreams  of  waking  and  sleeping  —  nay,  whether 

or  not  we  will,  among  the  littlenesses  and  exigences  of 

our  diurnal  affairs.    It  may  be  that,  driven  from  the 

I ;  Eden  of  direct  experience,  we  are  being  more  and  more 

*   forced  into  taking  refuge  within  the  haven  guarded  by 

I    our  dreams.  To  a  few  only  is  it  given  to  translate,  with 

I J  rare  distinction  and  excellence,  something  of  this  mani- 

1  fold  rnessage  ofBeauty. —  though  all  of  us  would  fain  be, 

with  your  Marius,  "  of  the  number  of  those  who  must  be 

made  perfect  by  the  love  of  visible  beauty."    Among 

these  few,  in  latter  years  in  this  country,  no  one  has 

wrought  more  exquisitely  for  us  than  Rossetti. 

The  dominance  of  Rossetti's  vision  of  artificial 
beauty  must  not  be  forgotten  when  we  read  the 
works  of  Fiona  Macleod. 

By  the  year  1892,  when  Sharp  was  thirty-seven, 
he  was  in  a  position  to  command  his  own  time  to 
a  certain  extent,  and  with  his  wife  he  settled 
down  for  a  while  in  a  little  cottage  at  Rudgwick, 
Sussex.  His  first  ambition  was  to  edit  a  maga- 
zine which  should  be  unhampered  by  any  policy 
save  his  own  whims  and  ambitions,  and  he  actu- 
ally wrote  and  printed  one  issue  of  the  Pagan  Re- 
view. Fortunately  he  carried  that  fantastic  pro- 


128     THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

ject  no  further.  Then  came  the  inspiration  of 
Fiona  Macleod.  He  himself  in  a  letter  to  Mrs. 
Thomas  Janvier,  who  was  one  of  the  few  in  the 
secret,  explained  why  he  assumed  this  disguised 
personality : 

I  can  write  out  of  my  heart  in  a  way  I  could  not  do  as 
William  Sharp,  and  indeed  I  could  not  do  so  if  I  were  the 
woman  Fiona  Macleod  is  supposed  to  be,  unless  veiled 
in  scrupulous  anonymity. .  . . 

This  rapt  sense  of  oneness  with  nature,  this  cosmic 
ecstasy  and  elation,  this  wayfaring  along  the  extreme 
verges  of  the  common  world,  all  this  is  so  wrought  up 
with  the  romance  of  life  that  1  could  not  bring  myself  to 
expression  by  my  outer  self,  insistent  and  tyrannical  as 
that  need  is. . . .  My  truest  self,  the  self  who  is  below  all 
other  selves,  and  my  most  intimate  life  and  joys  and 
sufferings,  thoughts,  emotions  and  dreams,  must  find 
expression,  yet  I  cannot  save  in  this  hidden  way. 

There  is,  as  I  have  said  before,  not  quite  so 
much  mystery  in  this  whole  proceeding  as  Mr. 
Sharp  and  some  of  his  friends  would  have  us  be- 
lieve —  the  mystery  in  fact  is  mainly  of  that  sort 
of  mystification  which  has  pleased  so  many  other 
romantic  writers,  and  which  has  its  roots  in  the 
rather  naive  desire  to  poae  as  the  prophetic  in- 
strument of  some  vast  renovation  of  ideas,  when 
really  the  prophet's  mind,  instead  of  labouring 
with  ideas,  is  floating  in  a  shoreless  sea  of  rev- 
ery  and  tossing  with  indistinguishable  emotions. 
Nor  is  it  at  all  strange  that  Sharp  should  have 
taken  a  woman's  name.     He  had  for  one  thing 


FIONA   MACLEOD  129 

the  Inspiration  of  his  lately  found  friend  in  Rome, 
of  whom  we  get  only  tantalizing  glimpses  in  the 
biography  and  in  his  dedications  —  the  woman 
who  stood  to  him  as  the  personification  of  the 
Anima  Celtica,  the  Celtic  Soul  still  brooding,  as 
he  describes  it,  in  the  "Land  of  Promise  whose 
borders  shine  with  the  loveliness  of  all  for- 
feited, or  lost,  or  banished  dreams  and  realities 
of  Beauty."  Moreover,  the  feminine  element, 
the  Ewig-Weibliche,  has  always  been  prominent 
in_the  ideals  of  romantic  Schwdrmerei,  and  it 
was  natural  that  this  latest  incarnation  of  the 
old  hopes  and  visions  should  have  appeared  in 
the  guise  of  a  feminine  form.  The  particular 
name  is  easily  accounted  for.  The  two  strongest 
impressions  seem  to  have  been  made  on  the  boy 
by  the  island  of  lona  and  the  old  man  Macleod ; 
Fiona  is  the  nearest  girl's  appellation  to  lona, 
and  so  the  name  is  made.  The  earliest  book  to 
appear  under  the  new  signature  was  Pharais, 
published  in  1894;  The  Mountain  Lovers,  which 
with  Pharais  forms  the  first  volume  of  the  col- 
lected works,  came  out  in  1895,  and  thereafter, 
for  the  ten  remaining  years  of  Sharp's  life,  there 
was  a  succession  of  stories,  sketches,  essays, 
poems,  and  dramas,  making  in  the  complete  edi- 
tion seven  fair-sized  volumes.  Pharais  caught 
the  attention  of  the  discerning  at  once,  and  the 
interest  in  the  unknown  writer  never  flagged. 
She  became  a  cult  with  some,  and  with  others  a 


130    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

recurring   escape    from    the    world    and    from 
thought. 

With  advancing  years  therestlessnessthat  from 
childhood  had  been  characteristic  of  Sharp's  tem- 
perament grew  to  what  can  only  be  described  as 
feverish  excess.   The  first  glimpse  we  have  of  him 
as  a  baby  is  in  the  form  of  a  runaway  storming 
a  make-believe  castle  in  fairy-land,  and  at  the 
end,  until  held  in  the  leash  by  ill-health,  we  see 
him  still  drifting,  or  rather  running,  from  place 
to  place,  seeking  febrile  exhilaration  from   the 
sea  or  unearthly  peace  from  the  hills,  always  in 
pSLjvvild  haste  to  overtake  some  vanishing  impal- 
I  pable  goal  of  the  heart's  desire.   He  who  boasted 
I  vaUantly  that  his  soul  knew  its  home  in  nature 
I  was,  like  so  many  of  his  tribe,  a  victim  in  fact  of 
L-arr  incurable  nostalgia.   He  died  in  Sicily  in  1905, 
beloved  and  regretted.   Over  his  grave  an  lona 
cross  was  raised,  and  on  it  were  cut  the  inscrip- 
tions chosen  by  himself : 

Farewell  to  the  known  and  exhausted, 
Welcome  the  unknown  and  illimitable  — 

and 

Love  is  more  great  than  we  conceive,  and  Death  is  the 
keeper  of  unknown  redemptions. 

I  cannot  at  all  agree  with  Mr.  Sharp's  esti- 
mates of  the  works  of  Fiona  Macleod.  He  appar- 
ently valued  most  the  later  writings  in  which  the 
human  motives  disappear  in  a  haze  of  disorgan- 
ized symbolism,  whereas  the  normal  reader  is 


FIONA   MACLEOD  131 

likely  to  find  his  interest  centring,  with  some  mi- 
nor exceptions,  in  the  tales  of  Pharais  and  The 
Mountain  Lovers.  In  these  the  discipline  Sharp 
had  acquired  from  long  apprenticeship  to  the 
press  kept  him  within  the  bounds  of  reason,  while 
the  new  freedom  and  the  Celtic  imagery  added  a 
note  of  strange  and  fascinating  beauty.  There  is 
more  of  passion  in  The  Mountain  Lovers;  the 
scenes  about  the  lonely  haunted  pool,  the  terrible 
unrelenting  love  and  madness  of  the  blind  old 
man,  the  elfish  fear  and  wisdom  of  the  dwarf, 
the  yearning  of  the  girl  Oona  that  a  soul  may  be 
born  in  her  wild  worshipper  —  the  whole  tissue 
of  emotions  in  this  solitude  where  the  influences 
of  forgotten  gods  are  more  numerous  than  the 
human  beings,  has  the  sombreness  and  awe  of 
real  tragedy.  But  on  the  whole  Pharais,  with  its 
quieter  beauty  and  subtler  pathos,  seems  to  me 
the  more  memorable  work;  Fiona  Macleod  never 
equalled  that  first  lovely  creation.  The  story  of 
Pharais,  briefly  stated,  is  of  a  fair  young  woman 
on  one  of  the  lonely  outer  isles;  of  her  husband 
upon  whom  the  mind-dark,  that  is  to  say  the 
clouding  forgetf ulness  of  melancholy,  has  fallen ; 
and  of  their  child  who  is  born  to  them  blind.  The 
elements  of  the  tale  may  sound  depressingly 
gloomy,  but  in  fact  they  are  so  lost  in  brave 
human  sympathies,  so  mingled  with  the  sym- 
bolic sadness  of  the  winds  and  especially  of  the 
infinite  voices  of  the  encompassing  sea,  that  the 


132    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

effect  is  not  depression  but  the  elevation  of  the 
finer  romantic  art.  When  the  Httle  child  is  buried, 
and  the  mourners  return  home,  the  voices  are 
filled  with  tragic  lamentation: 

. . .  The  island  lay  in  a  white  shroud.  At  the  extreme 
margin,  a  black,  pulsating  line  seemed  to  move  sinu- 
ously from  left  to  right. 

Suddenly  a  deeper  sound  boomed  from  the  sea, 
though  no  wind  ruffled  the  drifts  which  already  lay  thick 
in  the  hollows.  Till  midnight,  and  for  an  hour  beyond, 
this  voice  of  the  sea  was  as  the  baying  of  a  monstrous 
hound. 

None  in  the  homestead  slept.  The  silence,  broken 
only  by  that  strange,  menacing  baying  of  the  waves  as 
they  roamed  through  the  solitudes  environing  the  isle, 
was  so  intense  that  sometimes  the  ears  echoed  as  with 
the  noise  of  a  rush  of  wings,  or  as  with  the  sonorous  sus- 
pensions between  the  striking  of  bell  and  bell  in  monot- 
onously swung  chimes. 

Then  again,  suddenly,  and  still  without  the  coming  of 
wind,  the  sea  ceased  its  hoarse,  angry  baying,  and,  after 
lapse  within  lapse  till  its  chime  was  almost  inaudible, 
gave  forth  in  a  solemn  dirge  the  majestic  music  of  its 
inmost  heart. 

And  at  the  last,  when  the  husband  carries  the 
lifeless  burden  of  his  wife  out  into  the  white 
shroud  of  the  new-fallen  snow,  and,  for  a  mo- 
ment recovering  his  reason,  knows  his  loss  and 
the  mystery  of  life,  the  human  emotions  are 
again  involved  in  the  vision  and  sound  of  the  sea: 

Idly  he  watched  a  small,  grey  snow-cloud  passing  low 
above  the  island. 


FIONA   MACLEOD  133 

A  warm  breath  reached  the  heart  of  it,  and  set  the 
myriad  wings  astir.  Down,  straight  down  above  the  isle 
and  for  a  few  fathoms  beyond  it,  they  fluttered  waver- 
ingly. 

The  fall  was  like  a  veil  suspended  over  Ithona:  a  veil 
so  thin,  so  transparent,  that  the  sky  was  visible  through 
it  as  an  azure  dusk;  and  beneath  it,  the  sea  as  a  blue- 
flowing  lawn  whereover  its  skirts  trailed ;  while  behind 
it,  the  rising  sunfire  was  a  shimmer  of  amber-yellow  that 
made  every  falling  flake  glisten  like  burnished  gold.  .  .  . 

The  sea  lay  breathing  in  a  deep  calm  all  around  the 
isle.  But,  from  its  heart  that  never  slumbers,  rose  as  of 
yore,  and  for  ever,  a  rumour  as  of  muffled  prophesyings, 
a  Voice  of  Awe,  a  Voice  of  Dread. 

Having  found  his  public  in  these  two  tales,  Mr. 
Sharp,  I  think,  a  little  abused  its  good-nature.  A 
few  of  the  shorter  stories  have  a  weird  beauty  not 
without  some  relation  to  human  experience,  and 
some  of  the  nature-essays,  written  at  the  very 
end  of  his  life  and  brought  together  under  the 
title  of  Where  the  Forest  Murmurs,  display  an  in- 
timate union  of  symboHsm  and  real  observation 
such  as  many  in  these  latter  days  have  attempted 
but  few  have  achieved.  He  never,  for  instance, 
did  anything  better  in  its  way  than  The  Hill  Tarn, 
which  tells  how  an  old  gillie  climbed  one  mid- 
winter day  to  a  solitary  pool  in  the  mountains, 
and  what  strange  sight  there  met  his  eyes: 

. . .  He  started  before  dawn,  but  did  not  reach  the 
lochan  till  a  red  fire  of  sunset  flared  along  the  crests. 
The  tarn  was  frozen  deep,  and  for  all  the  pale  light  that 
dwelled  upon  it  was  black  as  basalt,  for  a  noon-tempest 


134    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

had  swept  its  surface  clear  of  snow.  At  first  he  thought 
small  motionless  icebergs  lay  in  it,  but  wondered  at  their 
symmetrical  circle.  He  descended  as  far  as  he  dared, 
and  saw  that  seven  wild-swans  were  frozen  on  the  tarn's 
face.  They  had  alit  there  to  rest,  no  doubt:  but  a  fierce 
cold  had  numbed  them,  and  an  intense  frost  of  death  had 
suddenly  transfixed  each  as  they  swam  slowly  circlewise 
as  is  their  wont.  They  may  have  been  there  for  days, 
perhaps  for  weeks.  A  month  later  the  gillie  repeated  his 
arduous  and  dangerous  feat.  They  were  still  there, 
motionless,  ready  for  flight  as  it  seemed. 

How  often  in  thought  I  have  seen  that  coronal  of 
white  swans  above  the  dark  face  of  that  far,  solitary 
tarn:  in  how  many  dreams  I  have  listened  to  the  rustle 
of  unloosening  wings,  and  seen  seven  white  phantoms 
rise  cloud-like,  and  like  clouds  at  night  drift  swiftly  into 
the  dark;  and  heard,  as  mournful  bells  through  the  soli- 
tudes of  sleep,  the  honk-Jwnk  of  the  wild-swans  travers- 
ing the  obscure  forgotten  ways  to  the  secret  country 
beyond  sleep  and  dreams  and  silence. 

Take  away  the  conventional  inanity  of  that 
last  phrase  and  you  have  here  a  passage  which 
contains  an  image  at  once  rare  and  actual  and  in 
itself  suggestive  of  the  most  romantic  interpre- 
tation. If  Mr.  Sharp  had  written  always,  or  even 
often,  in  that  vein,  he  would  have  accomplished 
something  memorable  and  large  in  EngHsh  let- 
ters; but  too  frequently  ,the  symbolism  riins 
.:Quite  away  with  him  and  leaves  one  vaguely 
jvondering  whether  he  really  had  anything  in 
-4iis  mind  to  symbolize.  Many  of  the  old  Gaelic 
traditions  and  legends  which  he  has  attempted 
to  revivify  strike  one  in  his  rendering  as  mere 


FIONA   MACLEOD  135 

empty  vapouring.  Though  he  never  united  him- 
self unreservedly  with  the  so-called  Celtic  move- 
ment and  deprecated  its  too  common  hostility 
to  prosaic  sense  and  to  everything  Saxon,  even 
bringing  upon  himself  the  obsecrations  of  some 
of  the  fiercer  enthusiasts,  yet  in  his  inability  to 
distinguish  between  an  idea  or  even  a  genuine 
emotion  and  the  fluttering  of  tired  nerves  he  fell 
again  and  again  into  meaningless  rhetoric  that 
makes  the  loosest  vapourings  of  "A.  E."  or  Mr. 
W.  B.  Yeats  seem  solid  and  compact  of  reason. 
His  two  plays  based  on  old  Irish  legends  are 
frankly  in  the  school  of  the  so-called  Psychic 
Drama,  which  is  the  ambition  of  many  young 
writers  for  the  stage  in  other  countries  as  well 
as  in  Ireland.  The  ultimate  aim  of  this  theatre 
de  Vdme,  he  says  in  the  introduction  to  one  of 
these  plays,  is  "  to  express  the  passion  of  remorse 
under  the  signal  of  a  Voice  lamenting,  or  the 
passion  of  tears  under  the  signal  of  a  Cry,  and 
be  content  to  give  no  name  to  these  protagon- 
ists." He  has  not,  indeed,  gone  quite  to  this  ex- 
treme of  inanity  in  his  actual  production,  but 
he  has  gone  far  enough  to  empty  his  characters  of 
all  individuality,  and  in  making  them  the  mere 
mouthpieces  of  the  vaguest  bubbles  of  revery  has 
left  them  passionless  nonentities.  Compare  his 
work  in  this  kind  with  that  of  Mr.  Synge,  who 
died  just  recently.  Mr.  Synge  had  too  much  feel- 
ing for  his  audience  and  too  strong  a  grasp  on 


136    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

personal  emotion  to  lose  himself  utterly  in  this 
shadow- world,  and  his  characters,  for  all  his 
Celtic  twilight,  have  some  of  the  blood  of  real 
life  in  thern.  The  simple  fact  is  that  Mr.  Sharp, 
having  got  the  trick  of  this  sort  of  symbolic  writ- 
ing, found  it  delightfully  easy  and  indulged  in 
it  without  restraint.  Possibly  he  deceived  him- 
self into  believing  that  to  write  without  thought 
is  to  write  with  inspiration;  in  reality  he  was 
abusing  an  outworn  convention.  Take  a  stanza 
of  his  poems  —  almost  any  stanza  will  do : 

Oh,  fair  immaculate  rose  of  the  world,  rose  of  my  dream, 
my  Rose! 

Beyond  the  ultimate  gates  of  dream  I  have  heard  thy  mys- 
tical call: 

It  is  where  the  rainbow  of  hope  suspends  and  the  river  of 
rapture  flows  — 

And  the  cool  sweet  dews  from  the  wells  of  peace  for  ever 
fall. 

Now  it  is  quite  possible  that  these  phrases  — 
"rose  of  my  dream,"  "ultimate  gates  of  dream," 
"rainbow  of  hope,"  "river  of  rapture,"  "wells  of 
peace"  —  it  is  quite  possible  that  these  phrases 
when  first  struck  out  corresponded  to  some 
yearning  for  an  ideal  clearly  conceived  and 
strongly  imaged,  but  as  they  are  used  and  end- 
lessly reiterated  by  Mr.  Sharp,  and  by  others  of 
his  school,  they  become  a  pure  poetic  convention 
emptier  of  specific  content  than  the  much-abused 
cliches  of  the  pseudo-classical  poets.  They  require 
no  effort  on  the  part  of  the  poet,  and  convey  no 


FIONA   MACLEOD  137 

shock  of  meaning  to  the  reader.  You  remember 
the  Grand  Academy  of  Lagado  which  was  once 
visited  by  a  certain  Mr.  Gulliver,  and  the  pleas- 
ant device  of  the  academicians  to  produce  litera- 
ture without  waste  of  brain.  Well,  something 
like  that  might  seem  to  be  the  method  employed 
in  turning  out  a  good  deal  of  this  late  romantic 
prose  and  verse.  All  you  need  do  is  to  have  a 
frame  of  shifting  blocks  on  which  are  inscribed 
severally  the  conventional  phrases,  and  then  by 
the  turn  of  a  crank  to  throw  them  into  new  com- 
binations, and,  presto,  the  thing  is  done.  Dr. 
Johnson  said  the  last  word  on  this  sort  of  com- 
position when  he  demolished  Ossian:  "Sir,  a  man 
might  write  such  stuff  for  ever,  if  he  would  aban- 
don his  mind  to  it." 

In  fact  there  is  in  all  this  literature  a  double 
misunderstanding,  as  must  be  pretty  clear  from 
what  has  been  already  said  about  it.  Sharp  and 
those  who  were  working  with  him  believed  that 
they  were  faithfully  renewing  the  old  Celtic  ideal- 
ism, and  they  believed  also  that  in  this  revival 
there  was  the  prophecy  of  a  great  spiritual  and 
imaginative  renovation  for  the  world;  whereas 
in  simple  truth  their  inspiration  came  essentially 
from  a  source  that  had  nothing  to  do  with  any 
special  character  of  the  Celts,  and  so  far  from 
being  heralds  of  youth  they  are  the  fag  end  of  a 
movement  that  shows  every  sign  of  expiring. 
Now  it  is  well  not  to  exaggerate  on  either  side. 


138    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

Something  of  the  ancient  Celtic  imagination  has 
undoubtedly  been  caught  up  by  these  young  en- 
thusiasts.   There  is  to  begin  with  in  the  writings 
of  Fiona   Macleod  a  good  deal  of  the  actual 
legendary   matter,  taken  in  part  from  written 
records  and  in  part  from  the  fragmentary  and 
fast-disappearing   tradition   among  the  Gaelic- 
speaking  people  of  the  Highlands  and  the  West- 
ern Islands.    The  mere  use  of   the  names  and 
myths  of  a  time  is  likely  to  carry  with  it  some- 
thing of  the  emotional  content  that  has  become 
associated  with   them.    The  new  and    the   old 
schools  of  the  Celt  have  thus  certain  traits  in  com- 
mon —  the  sense  of  fateful  brooding,  the  feeling 
of  dark  and  bright  powers  concealed  in  nature 
and  working  mysteriously  upon  human  destiny, 
the  conception  of  passions  as  forces  that   have 
a  strange  life  in  themselves  and  come  into  the 
breasts  of  men  as  if  they  were  ghostly  visitants, 
the  craving  for  unearthly  but  very  real  beauty, 
the  haunting  belief  in  a  supernatural  world  that 
lies  now  far  away  in  the  unattainable  West,  and 
now  buried  beneath  our  feet  or  just  trembling  into 
vision,  the  mixture  of  fear  and  yearning  towards 
that  world  as  a  source  of  incalculable  joys  or  dark 
forgetful  madness  to  those  who  break  in  upon  its 
secret  reserve.   All  these  things,  more  or  less  ex- 
plicit, you  will  find  in  the  saga  literature  of  Ire- 
land as  it  has  been  paraphrased  by  Lady  Gregory 
in  her  Cuchulain  of  Muirthemne  or  translated 


FIONA   MACLEOD  139 

more  literally  by  Miss  Hull  and  other  scholars; 
and  you  will  find  them  in  the  books  of  Fiona 
Macleod  and  Mr.  Yeats.  But  withal  the  essen- 
tial spirit  of  the  sagas  is  quite  different  from  that 
of  these  imitators  —  as  different  as  tremendous 
action  is  frorn,...sickly, brooding^  The  light  in  the 
old  tales  is  hard  and  sharp  and  brilliant,  whereas 
our  modern  writers  rather  like  to  merge  the  out- 
lines of  nature  in  an  all-obliterating  grey.  The 
heroes  in  the  sagas  are  men  and  women  that 
throb  with  insatiable  life,  and  their  emotions, 
whatever  mysticism  may  lie  in  the  background, 
are  the  stark,  mortal  passions  of  love  and  greed 
and  hatred  and  revenge  and  lamentable  grief; 
whereas  it  is  the  creed  of  the  newer  school,  fortu- 
nately not  always  followed,  to  create  a  literature, 
which,  instead  of  dealing  with  the  clashing  wills 
of  men,  shall,  in  the  words  of  Fiona  Macleod, 
offer  "the  subtlest  and  most  searching  means 
for  the  imagination  to  compel  reality  to  dreams, 
to  compel  actuality  to  vision,  to  compel  to  the 
symbolic  congregation  of  words  the  bewildering 
throng  of  wandering  and  illusive  thoughts  and 
ideas."  What  Fiona  Macleod  meant  by  this 
"theatre  of  the  soul"  can  be  made  clear  by  a 
single  comparison.  There  is  in  the  book  of  Lady 
Gregory  a  version  of  the  Fate  of  the  Sons  oj 
Usnach,  being  an  account  of  the  marvellous  love- 
liness of  Deirdre  and  of  the  ruin  it  wrought, 
which,  in  spite  of  some  incoherence,  is  one  of 


140    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

the  unforgettable  stories  of  the  world.  When 
Deirdre  is  born  a  Druid  comes  to  the  house, 
and  sees  the  child,  and  utters  this  vision  of  the 
future : 

O  Deirdre,  on  whose  account  many  shall  weep,  on 
whose  account  many  women  shall  be  envious,  there  will 
be  trouble  on  Ulster  for  your  sake,  O  fair  daughter  of 
Fedlimid. 

Many  will  be  jealous  of  your  face,  O  flame  of  beauty; 
for  your  sake  heroes  shall  go  to  exile.  For  your  sake 
deeds  of  anger  shall  be  done  in  Emain;  there  is  harm  in 
your  face,  for  it  will  bring  banishment  and  death  on  the 
sons  of  kings.  ... 

You  will  have  a  litde  grave  apart  to  yourself;  you  will 
be  a  tale  of  wonder  for  ever,  Deirdre. 

Now  Mr.  Sharp  has  adopted  the  story  of  The 
House  of  Usna  for  his  theatre  of  the  soul,  and  this 
is  what  he  has  to  say  in  a  song  of  Deirdre : 

Dim  face  of  Beauty  haunting  all  the  world, 

Fair  face  of  Beauty  all  too  fair  to  see. 

Where  the  lost  stars  adown  the  heavens  are  hurled 

There,  there  alone  for  thee 

May  white  peace  be. 

For  here,  where  all  the  dreams  of  men  are  whirled 
Like  sere,  torn  leaves  of  autumn  to  and  fro, 
There  is  no  place  for  thee  in  all  the  world. 

Who  drifted  as  a  star, 

Beyond,  afar. 

Between  the  very  woman  Deirdre  of  the  saga 
and  this  "dim  face  of  Beauty"  a  whole  civiliza- 
tion has  passed;  the  force  that  is  moving  Fiona 


FIONA   MACLEOD  141 

Macleod  is  in  its  essential  quality  not  from  the 
Celt  or  Gael,  but,  as  the  phrase  adopted  by  her 
implies,  from  the  thedtre  de  I'dme  of  Maeterlinck, 
and  far  behind  him  from  the  whole  romantic 
movement  of  Europe.  We  have  seen  the  earlier 
grandiose  schemes  of  William  Sharp  melted 
down  in  practice  to  a  commonplace  imitation  of 
Wordsworth  and  Shelley  and  Keats ;  these  later 
productions  of  Fiona  Macleod,  though  they  show 
more  literary  skill  and  take  much  of  their  gla- 
mour from  reminiscences  of  Celtic  legend,  are  es- 
sentially drawn  from  the  same  failing  well  from 
which  in  its  abundance  those  poets  drew  their 
sturdier  dreams  of  pantheism.  Here  is  the  twilight 
and  not  the  dawn  of  a  great  movement. 

I  have  not  made  myself  understood  if  I  have 
conveyed  the  idea  that  there  is  nothing  of  loveli- 
ness in  this  late  manifestation  of  romanticism. 
And  I  know  well  its  plea  of  justification.  -iLelaxa- 
t^n,  one  says,  has  its  place  as  well  as  strenuous 
indention.  It  Ts  wholesome  at  times  to  withdraw 
from  the  struggle  of  existence  and  wander  by  the 
tonely. shores  J  where  the  sharpness  of  life's  out- 
lines is  blurred  by  floating  mists,  and  the  voices 
of  the  world  are  lost  in  the  lisp  and  clamour  of 
the  tides;  where  the  hard  sense  of  our  individual 
personality  dissolves  into  the  flux  of  vague  im- 
personal forces,  and  the  difficulties  of  thought 
and  the  pangs  of  unattained  desire  are  soothed 
"Into    inconseguential  revery.    Especially  when 


142    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

the  heart  is  fatigued  by  the  harsh  intrusions  of 
.science  and  a  scientific  philosophy  it  is  good  to 
_seek  refuge  in  surrender  to  an  impressionism  that 
acknowledges  no  law  of  control.  I  would  not 
even  say  that  this  opposition  to  science  —  and  at 
bottom  modern  romance  is  an  attempt  to  escape 
from  the  circle  of  scientific  necessity  —  has  no 
specious  argument  on  its  side.  For,  after  all,  if 
we  must  interpret  nature  in  terms  of  human 
comprehension,  why  have  not  the  emotions  as 
good  a  right  as  reason  to  dictate  the  symbols  of 
the  formula?  If  Sir  George  Darwin  is  justified  in 
elaborating  a  mathematical  equation  which  shall 
express  the  action  of  the  tides  in  the  pure  lan- 
guage of  man's  intellect,  why  may  not  the  ro- 
mantic poet  express  them  in  the  speech  of  pure 
emotion?  In  the  one  case  we  are  enabled  to  pre- 
dict the  recurrence  of  phenomena  and  so  to  en- 
large the  sphere  of  rational  life;  in  the  other  case 
we  add  new  realms  to  our  emotional  life.  In 
either  case  we  are^dealing^  with  symbols  pnly^  and 
are  brought  not  one  step  nearer  to  a  realization 
of  the  sheer  fact  of  nature;  nor  is  it  easy  to  see 
how  one  set  of  symbols  has  more  reality  in  its 
influence  on  conduct  and  practice  than  the  other. 
The  fault  of  this  pantheistic  romance,  in  truth, 
lies  not  in  its  opposition  to  science,  but  in  the 
illusory  character  of  that  opposition,  and  in  its 
inability  at  the  last  to  lift  the  imagination  out  o£- 
the  very  field  in  which  science  also  moves.  They 


FIONA   MACLEOD  143 

are  both  the  children  of  naturalism,  and  grew  up 
together.  There  are  gleams  of  magic  beauty  in 
this  romance :  there  is  a  momentary  relief  in  fling- 
ing  one's  self  from  the  purely  intellectual  absorp- 
tion in  nature  to  the  purely  emotional,  from  ra- 
tionalism to  revery;  but  the  change  is  no  more 
than  a  change  in  attitude  towards  the  same  mas- 
ter, and  the  desired  liberation  is  not  here.  Rather, 
as  the  divergence  between  science  and  romance  is 
^vldened,  the  bounds  within  which  they  are  both 
conHned  press  more  harshly  upon  the  imagina- 
tion, and  the  mind,  vacillating  restlessly  from  one 
extreme  to  the  other,  ends  in  a  state  of  futile  irri- 
tation. These  glimpses  of  illusory  beauty  and  this 
offer  of  freedom  leave  us  in  the  end  a  more  help- 
less prey  of  the  unlovely  tyranny  from  which  we 
thought  to  escape. 


NIETZSCHE 


NIETZSCHE 

If  the  number  of  books  written  about  a  sub- 
ject is  any  proof  of  interest  in  it,  Nietzsche  must 
have  become  one  of  the  most  popular  of  authors 
among  Englishmen  and  Americans.  Besides  the 
authorized  version  of  his  Works  appearing  under 
the  editorial  care  of  Dr.  Levy/  every  season  for 
the  past  three  or  four  years  has  brought  at  least 
one  new  interpretation  of  his  theories  or  bio- 
graphy of  the  man.  Virtually  all  of  these  books 
are  composed  by  professed  and  uncritical  ad- 
mirers, but  we  can,  nevertheless,  see  the  figure 
of  Nietzsche  beginning  to  stand  out  in  its  true 
character.  He  was  not  quite  the  Galahad  of 
philosophy  that  he  appeared  to  his  sister,^  yet 
neither  was  he  the  monster  of  immorality  which 
frightened  us  when  first  his  theories  began  to 
be  bruited  abroad.  The  stern,  calculating  Super- 
man turns  out  on  inspection  to  be  a  creature  of 
quivering  nerves  and  of  extreme  sensitiveness  to 
the  opinion  of  his  fellows,  though  with  a  vein 
of  dauntless  resolution  through  it  all. 

1  The  Complete  Works  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche.  The  first  complete  and 
authorized  English  translation.  Edited  by  Dr.  Oscar  Levy.  London: 
T.  N.  Foulis;  New  York:  The  Macmillan  Co.  i8  volumes. 

'  Das  Leben  Friedrich  Nietzsche's.  Von  Elisabeth  Forster-Nietzsche. 
Leipzig.  189s,  1897,  1904.  —  The  best  biography  in  English  is  The  Life 
of  Friedrich  Nietzsche,  by  Daniel  Halevy;  translated  [from  the  French]  by 
J.  M.  Hoae.    New  York:  The  Macmillaa  Co.  1911.    . 


148    THE   DRIFT  OF   ROMANTICISM 

Friedrich  Wilhelm  Nietzsche,  to  give  his  full 
baptismal  name,  was  born  in  the  little  village  of 
Rocken,  October  jl5j_i_844.  His  father,  a  Luth- 
eran clergyman  of  scholarly  and  musical  tastes, 
suffered  a  severe  fall  when  the  child  was  four 
years  old,  and  died  after  a  short  period  of  mental 
aberration.  In  1850  the  widow  went  with  her 
son  and  her  daughter  Elisabeth  to  live  with  her 
husband's  mother  and  sister  in  Naumburg-an- 
der-Saale.  There  Friedrich  grew  to  be  a  solemn, 
thoughtful  boy,  nicknamed  by  his  comrades 
"  the  little  pastor."  With  his  sister  and  one  or 
two  friends  he  raised  about  himself  a  fantastic 
world  of  the  imagination,  in  which  he  played 
many  heroic  roles.  Yet  always  he  felt  himself 
alone  and  set  apart.  "From  childhood,"  he 
wrote  in  his  boyish  journal,  "  I  sought  solitude, 
and  found  my  happiness  there  where  undis- 
turbed I  could  retire  into  myself." 

At  the  age  of  fourteen  he  received  a  scholar- 
ship at  the  school  of  Pforta,  situated  on  the  Saale 
about  five  miles  from  Naumburg.  In  this  clois- 
tered institution,  where  the  ancient  discipline  of 
the  Cistercian  founders  still  prevailed  over  its 
Protestant  curriculum,  Nietzsche  acquired  that 
thorough  grounding  in  the  classics  which  served 
him  later  in  his  philological  studies,  and  for  a 
while  he  felt  in  his  heart  the  influence  of  the  re- 
ligious, almost  monastic,  life.  But  the  spirit  of 
weariness  and  rebellion  soon  supervened.   "The 


NIETZSCHE  149 

existence  of  God,"  he  wrote  in  an  exercise  for  a 
literary  society,  "immortality,  the  authority  of 
the  Bible,  Revelation,  and  the  like,  will  forever 
remain  problems.  |__have  attempted  to  deny 
everything:  ah,  to  destroy  is  easy,  but  to  build 
up!"  And  further:  "Very  often  submission  to  the 
will  of  God  and  humility  are  but  a  covering  man- 
tle for  cowardly  reluctance  to  face  our  destiny 
with  determination."  —  So  early  was  the  boy 
preluding  to  the  life-work  of  the  man. 

At  Pforta,  Nietzsche  had  become  intimate 
with  Paul  Deussen  (afterwards  the  eminent  Ori- 
ental scholar  and  disciple  of  Schopenhauer),  and 
with  Deussen  and  another  friend  he  began  his 
university  career  at  Bonn.  But  from  his  com- 
rades there  hesoon  fled,  "like a  fugitive,"  hesays, 
and  went  to  Leipzig.  Here  he  came  under  the 
influence  that  was  to  shape  his  whole  literary  ca- 
reer. Chancing  one  day  at  a  bookshop  on  a  copy 
of  The  World  as  Will  and  Representation,  he 
heard  as  it  were  a  daemon  whispering  in  his  ear : 
"Take  the  book  home  with  you."  This  was  his 
Tolle,  lege;  the  message  had  found  him.  Rebel  as 
he  might  in  later  years  against  Schopenhauer's 
pessimistic  doctrine  of  blind,  unmeaning  will; 
try  as  he  might  to  construct  a  positive  doctrine 
out  of  that  blank  negation,  he  never  got  the 
poison  out  of  his  blood.  Much  of  the  pose  and 
lyric  misanthropy  of  Zarathustra  is  really  an 
echo  of  what  he  read  in  his  room  on  that  fateful 


I50    THE   DRIFT   OF  ROMANTICISM 

day.  It  is  probable,  too,  that  his  careful  use  of 
language  is  partly  due  to  the  influence  of  Scho- 
penhauer. In  Leipzig  also  he  met  the  man  who 
was  to  be  the  great  joy  and  the  great  torment  of 
his  life.  One  memorable  evening,  at  the  house 
of  a  friend,  he  was  introduced  to  Wagner,  heard 
him  play  from  the  Meister singer,  and  learnt  that 
the  "musician  of  the  future"  was  a  disciple  of 
Schopenhauer. 

Meanwhile  he  had  not  neglected  his  classical 
studies  and  had  already  published  several  phil- 
ological essays  in  the  Rheinisches  Museum.  In 
1869,  through  the  recommendation  of  his  master 
and  friend,  Ritschl,  he  was  appointed  Professor 
of  Philology  in  the  University  of  Basle,  and  took 
up  his  residence  in  the  Swiss  town,  not  without 
misgivings  over  his  youth  and  his  unfitness  for 
the  routine  of  teaching.  Nevertheless,  he  threw 
himself  into  the  task  with  zeal  and  was,  in  the  be- 
ginning at  least,  highly  successful  with  the  stu- 
dents. 

At  that  time  Richard  and  Cosima  Wagner 
were  living  in  seclusion  at  Triebschen  on  the  lake 
of  the  Four  Cantons,  not  far  from  Lucerne,  while 
the  master  was  completing  his  great  tetralogy. 
Here  Nietzsche  renewed  the  acquaintance  which 
had  been  begun  at  Leipzig,  and  was  soon  deeply 
absorbed  in  Wagner's  ideas  and  ambitions.  "I 
have  found  a  man,"  he  wrote  in  a  letter  after  his 
first  visit  to  Triebschen,  "who  more  than  any 


NIETZSCHE  151 

other  reveals  to  me  the  image  of  what  Schopen- 
hauer calls  'geniusj  and  who  is  quite  penetrated 
with  that  wonderful,  fervent  philosophy.  .-^.  No 
qne^ knows  him  and  can  judge  him,  because  all 
the  world  stands  on  another  basis  and  is  not  at 
home  in  his  atmosphere.  In  him  rules  an  ideal- 
ity so  absolute,  a  humanity  so  profound  and 
moving,  an  earnestness  of  life  so  exalted,  that  in 
his  presence  I  feel  myself  as  in  the  presence  of 
the  divine."  Under  the  sway  of  this  admiration 
Nietzsche  wrote  and  published  his  first  book, 
The  Birth  of  Tragedy,  in  which  he  broke  lance 
with  the  pedantic  routine  of  philology  as  then 
taught  in  the  universities,  and  held  up  the  Wag- 
nerian opera  as  a  reincarnation  of  the  spirit  of 
Greek  tragedy  and  as  the  art  of  the  future.  "Any- 
thing more  beautiful  than  your  book  I  have  never 
read !  all  is  noble!"  was  the  comment  of  the  com- 
plaisant master.  Nietzsche  always  maintained 
that  those  were  the  happiest  days  of  his  life;  for 
a  little  while  he  was  excited  out  of  imprisoning 
egotism  and  caught  up  into  another  egotism 
greater  than  his  own.  3ut  the  cause  of  his  happi- 
ness  was  also  the  cause  of  its  instability.  No 
doubt  the  scandalous  rupture  between  the  two 
friends  was  due  in  part  to  philosophical  differ- 
ences, for  in  the  Wagnerian  opera  Nietzsche 
came  later  to  see  all  the  elements  of  romantic 
idealism  which  were  most  abhorrent  to  him.  But 
deeper  yet  lay  the  inevitable  necessity  that  two 


152    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

personalities,  each  of  which  sought  to  absorb  the 
world  into  itself,  should  separate  with  fire  and 
thunder.  In  his  last  days  Nietzsche  insinuated 
that  there  had  been  love  between  him  and  Cos- 
ima,  but  this  was  no  doubt  a  delusion  of  madness. 
The  friendship  and  quarrel  are  easily  explained 
as  a  tragic  and  humorous  incident  of  romanti- 
cism. 

But  to  return  to  Basle.  The  routine  of  univer- 
sity life  soon  became  irksome  to  Nietzsche.  He 
felt  within  him  the  stirring  of  a  new  philosophy, 
to  develop  which  he  needed  leisure  and  inde- 
pendence. His  health,  too,  began  to  alarm  him. 
In  one  of  the  recesses  of  his  Leipzig  years  he  had 
been  drafted  into  a  Prussian  regiment  of  artillery, 
despite  his  exemption  due  to  short  sight,  and  had 
served  reluctantly  but  faithfully,  until  released  on 
account  of  an  injury  caused  by  falling  from  his 
horse.  His  strength  was  never  the  same  after 
that,  though  the  seat  of  his  disease  was  deeper 
than  any  accidental  hurt.  Especially  at  Basle 
he  began  to  suffer  severely  from  insomnia  and 
various  nervous  ailments,  and  at  last,  in  1879, 
he  broke  his  connection  with  the  university,  and 
went  out  into  the  world  to  seek  health  and  to 
publish  his  new  gospel. 

For  a  while  he  lived  with  his  sister,  and  pro- 
jected with  her  great  schemes  for  a  kind  of  monas- 
tic seminary,  wherein  a  few  noble  spirits,  dissatis- 
fied with  the  world  and,  needless  to  add,  devoted 


NIETZSCHE  153 

to  himself,  should  dwell  together  and  from  their 
studious  seclusion  pour  out  a  stream  of  philosophy 
to  regenerate  society.  After  his  sister  left  him  — 
they  parted  not  on  the  best  of  terms  —  he  passed 
his  time  in  Italy  and  Switzerland.  He  was  always 
a  lover  of  the  mountains,  and  especially  in  the 
pure  air  of  the  Engadine  he  found  temporary  re- 
lief for  the  ills  of  the  body  and  refreshment  of 
spirit  after  contact  with  unsympathetic  man- 
kind. He  walked  much,  and  his  later  books  — 
with  the  exception  of  Zarathustra,  which  pos- 
sesses some  thread  of  composition  —  are  not 
much  more  than  miscellaneous  collections  of 
pensees  jotted  down  as  they  came  to  him  by  the 
way.  A  flattering  portrait  of  him  in  these  lone- 
lier years  was  drawn  by  his  enthusiastic  disciple, 
Madame  Meta  von  Salis-Marschlins,  in  her  Philo- 
soph  und  Edelmensch.  Not  all  was  yet  cloud  and 
gloom  about  his  brooding  soul,  and  the  Superman 
was  still  capable  of  gay  comradeship  and  of  the 
most  approved  German  revery  over  the  beauties 
of  nature.  His  conversation,  when  he  felt  at  ease, 
was  copious  and  brilliant.  But  he  was  slipping 
more  and  more  into  bitter,  self-consuming  soli- 
tude. "I  have  forty-three  years  behind  me,"  he 
wrote  one  day,  "and  am  as  alone  as  if  I  were  a 
child." 

The  end  was  unrelieved  darkness.  With  the 
neglect  or  vilification  of  his  books,  with  the  alien- 
ation of  one  friend  after  another,  and  with  the 


154    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

growth  of  the  taint  in  his  blood,  his  self-absorp- 
tion developed  into  fitful  illusions  and  downright 
megalomania.  His  last  work  he  called  Ecce  Homo, 
and  to  Brandes,  the  well-known  critic,  he 
wrote:  — 

Friend  George,  —  Since  you  have  discovered  me,  it 
is  not  wonderful  to  find  me:  what  is  now  difficult  is  to 
lose  me. 

The  Crucified. 

After  lingering  some  time  in  imbecility  under  the 
care  of  his  sister  at  Weimar,  he  died  on  the  25th 
of  August,  19CK). 

One  may  begin  the  perusal  of  the  life  of 
Nietzsche  with  a  feeling  of  repulsion  for  the  man, 
—  at  least  that,  I  confess,  was  my  own  experi- 
ence, —  but  one  can  scarcely  lay  it  down  without 
pity  for  his  tragic  failures,  and  without  something 
like  admiration  for  his  reckless  devotion  to  ideas. 
And  all  through  the  reading  one  is  impressed  by 
the  truth  which  his  ardent  worshipper,  Madame 
von  Salis-Marschlins,  has  made  the  keynote  of 
her  characterization:  "He  —  and  this  is  the 
salient  point  —  condemned  a  whole  class  of  feel- 
mgsjn  their  excess,  not  because  he  did  not  have 
.them,  but  just  because  he  did  have  them  and 
:new  their  danger."  That  truth  is  as  important 
for  judging  the  man  as  for  understanding  his 
philosophy.  He  was  a  man  terribly  at  war  with 
himself,  and  in  this  very  breach  in  his  nature  lies 
the  attraction  —  powerfully  felt  but  not  always 


NIETZSCHE  155 

clearly  understood  —  of  his  works  for  the  mod- 
ern world.  No  doubt,  if  we  look  into  the  causes 
of  his  growing  popularity,  we  shall  find  that  a 
considerable  part  of  his  writing  is  just  the  sort 
of  spasmodic  commonplace  that  enraptures  the 
half-cultured  and  flatters  them  with  thinking 
they  have  discovered  a  profound  philosophical 
basis  for  their  untutored  emotions.  But  withal 
he  cannot  be  quite  so  easily  disposed  of.  He  may 
be,  like  Poe,  "three-fifths  of  him  genius  and  two- 
fifths  mere  fudge";  but  the  inspired  part  of  him 
is  the  provocative  and,  it  might  be  said,  final  ex- 
pression of  one  side  of  the  contest  between  the 
principles  of  egotism  and  sympathy  that  for  two 
centuries  and  more  has  been  waging  for  the  polity 
and  morals  of  the  world.  We  cannot  rightly  un- 
derstand Nietzsche  unless  we  find  his  place  in 
this  long  debate,  and  to  do  this  we  must  take  a 
rapid  glance  backward. 

The  problem  to  which  Nietzsche  gives  so  abso- 
lute an  answer  was  definitely  posed  in  the  eight- 
eenth century  but  its  peculiarity  is  best  shown 
by  comparing  it  with  the  issue  as  seen  in  the  pre- 
ceding age.  To  the  dominant  moralists  of  the 
seventeenth  century  the  basis  of  human  nature 
■was_a,j3ure  egotism.  La  Rochefoucauld  gave  the 
most  finished  expression  to  this  belief  in  his  doc- 
trine of  amour-propre,  displaying  itself  in  a  vanity 
that  takes  pleasure  in  the  praise  of  ourselves  and 
a  jealousy  that  takes  umbrage  at  the  praise  of 


156    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

others.  In  England  the  motive  of  egotism  had 
already  been  developed  by  Hobbes  into  a  com- 
plete philosophy  of  the  State.  "In  the  first 
/^iace,"  said  Hobbes,  "I  put  forth,  for  a  general 
*  inclination  of  all  mankind,  a  perpetual  and  rest- 
less desire  of  power  after  power,  that  ceaseth  only 
in  death."  The  natural  condition  of  mankind, 
therefore,  is  that  every  man's  hand  should  be 
against  every  other  man,  and  society  is  the  result 
of  a  compact  by  which  individuals,  since  each  is 
unable  to  defend  himself  alone  against  the  pas- 
sions of  all  others,  are  driven  to  mutual  conces- 
sions. The  contrary  principle  of  natural  sym- 
pathy was  involved  in  the  political  theories  of 
Grotius  and  his  followers.  It  is  even  more  fully 
implied  in  the  vagaries  of  certain  of  the  sects 
commonly  called  Levellers,  underlying,  for  exam- 
ple, the  protest  of  the  fanatic  company  of  Dig- 
gers who,  when  arrested  for  starting  a  communis- 
tic settlement  in  Surrey,  declared  that  "the  time 
of  deliverance  was  at  hand ;  and  God  would  bring 
His  People  out  of  slavery,  and  restore  them  to 
their  freedom  in  enjoying  the  fruits  and  benefits 

of  the  Earth That  their  intent  is  to  restore 

the  Creation  to  its  former  condition. . , .  That  the 
times  will  suddenly  be,  when  all  men  shall  will- 
ingly come  and  give  up  their  lands  and  estates, 
and  submit  to  this  Community  of  Goods." 

In  this  opposition  between  Hobbes's  notion  of 
the  natural  condition  of  man  as  one  of  warfare, 


NIETZSCHE  157 

and  the  humble  effort  of  the  Diggers  to  restore 
mankind  to  a  primitive  state  of  equaUty  and  fra- 
ternity, one  may  see  foreshadowed  the  ethical  the- 
ories of  self-interest  and  benevolence  which  were 
to  be  developed  in  the  next  century.  But  there 
was  an  element  in  the  theorizing  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  which  separates  these  men  from 
their  successors.  Above  the  idea  of  nature  hov- 
ered, more  or  less  distinctly,  the  idea  of  a  super- 
natural power.  Even  Hobbes,  though  he  was  re- 
pudiated by  his  own  party  as  an  atheist,  and 
though  his  philosophy  was  in  itself  one  of  pure 
naturalism,  was  led  by  the  spirit  of  the  age  to 
complete  his  conception  of  the  civil  common- 
wealth dependent  on  the  law  of  nature  with  a 
Christian  commonwealth  based  on  supernatural 
revelation  and  the  will  of  God.  So,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  political  schemes  of  fraternity  were 
almost  universally  subordinate  to  notions  of  the- 
ocratic government.  Of  purely  natural  sympa- 
thy, as  it  was  later  to  be  developed  into  the  sole 
source  of  virtue,  the  epoch  had  comparatively 
little  thought.  This  distinction  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  in  the  history  of  ethics,  and  may  be 
rendered  more  precise  by  consideration  of  a 
few  lines  from  that  erudite  scholar,  but  crabbed 
poet.  Dr.  Henry  More.  In  his  Cupid's  Conflict 
the  great  Platonist  becomes  almost  lyrical  when 
this  theme  is  touched : 


158     THE   DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

When  I  my  self  from  mine  own  self  do  quit 
And  each  thing  else;  then  an  all-spreaden  love 
To  the  vast  Universe  my  soul  doth  fit, 
Makes  me  half  equall  to  All-seeing  Jove. 

My  mightie  wings  high  stretch'd  then  clapping  light 
I  brush  the  starres  and  make  them  shine  more  bright. 

Then  all  the  works  of  God  with  close  embrace 
I  dearly  hug  in  my  enlarged  arms, 
All  the  hid  paths  of  heavenly  Love  I  trace 
And  boldly  listen  to  his  secret  charms. 

The  same  idea  occurs  more  than  once  in  the 
mystical  doctor's  prose,  which  was,  if  truth  be 
told,  a  good  deal  more  poetical  than  his  verse. 
"And  even  the  more  Miserable  Objects  in  this 
present  Scene  of  things,"  he  somewhere  writes, 
"cannot  divest  him  of  his  Happiness,  but  rather 
modifie  it;  the  Sweetness  of  his  Spirit  being 
melted  into  a  kindly  compassion  in  the  behalf  of 
Others :  Whom  if  he  be  able  to  help,  it  is  a  greater 
Accession  to  his  Joy;  and  if  he  cannot,  the  being 
Conscious  to  himself  of  so  sincere  a  compassion, 
and  so  harmonious  and  suitable  to  the  present 
State  of  things,  carries  along  with  it  some  degree 
of  Pleasure,  like  Mournful  Notes  of  Musick  ex- 
quisitely well  fitted  to  the  Sadness  of  the  Ditty." 
'  ^t  is  clear  that  this  sense  of  compassion  is  a  mo- 
tive utterly  different  in  kind  from  the  sympathy 
which  meant  so  much  to  the  next  age;  to  pass 
from  one  to  the  other  a  great  principle  had  to  be 
eliminated  from  the  philosophy  of  human  con- 
duct, and  this  principle  was  manifestly  the  sense 


NIETZSCHE  159 

of  the  divine,  of  the  infinite  which  stood  aparti 
from  mortal  passions  and  of  which  some  simula-l" 
crum  resided  in  the  human  breast.  The  man  whot 
finally  effected  this  revolution,  partly  by  virtue  { 
of  his  own  genius  and  partly  as  spokesman  of  his  ' 
time,  was  John  Locke,  whose  Essay  Concerning 
Human  Understanding,  published  in  1690  as  the 
result  of  eighteen  years  of  reflection,  became  the 
bible,  so  to  speak,  of  the  next  century.  Locke  did 
not  expressly  deny  the  existence  of  a  superna- 
tural world.  To  explain  our  sense  of  morality  he 
still  had  recourse  to  a  law  of  God  imposed  upon 
man  by  decree  and  without  any  corresponding 
law  in  nature ;  and  he  began  his  philosophical  dis- 
cussion by  a  kind  of  apology,  declaring  that  "God 
having  endued  man  with  those  faculties  of  know- 
ing which  he  hath,  was  no  more  obliged  by  his 
Goodness  to  plant  those  innate  notions  in  his 
mind,  than  that,  having  given  him  reason,  hands, 
and  materials.  He  should  build  him  bridges  or 
houses."  But,  having  thus  apologetically  cleared  ; 
the  field,  Locke  proceeded  to  elaborate  a  theory 
of  sensations  and  ideas  which  really  leaves  noi 
place  in  the  human  soul  for  anything  outside  of  ( 
the  phenomenal  laws  of  nature.   It  was  his  task'^ 
to  give  a  clear  psychological  basis  to  a  philosophy 
which  had  been  struggling  for  existence  through 
the  seventeenth  century. 

One  of  the  first  and  strangest  fruits  of  this  new 
naturalism  was  Mandeville's  Fable  of  the  Bees, 


i6o    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

which  undertakes  to  show  by  the  apologue  of  a 
hive  of  bees  that  the  welfare  of  a  State  is  the  re- 
sult of  the  counterbalancing  of  the  passions  of  its 
individual  citizens,  that,  in  a  word,  private  vices 
are  public  virtues: 

Thus  every  Part  was  full  of  Vice, 
Yet  the  whole  Mass  a  Paradise. 

The  poem  in  itself  was  not  much  more  than  a 
clever  jeu  d' esprit,  but  the  Remarks  and  the  In- 
quiry into  the  Origin  of  Moral  Virtue,  which  he 
published  in  defence  of  his  thesis,  are  among  the 
acutest  psychological  tracts  of  the  age.  "I  be- 
lieve man,"  he  says,  "  (besides  skin,  flesh,  bones, 
etc.,  that  are  obvious  to  the  eye)  to  be  a  com- 
pound of  various  passions,  that  all  of  them,  as 
they  are  provoked  and  come  uppermost,  govern 
him  by  turns,  whether  he  will  or  no."  The  pas- 
sions which  produce  the  effect  of  virtue  are  those 
that  spring  from  pride  and  the  sense  of  power  and 
the  desire  of  luxury.  "  Pity,"  he  adds,  "though  it 
is  the  most  gentle  and  the  least  mischievous  of  all 
our  passions,  is  yet  as  much  a  frailty  of  our  na- 
ture, as  anger,  pride,  or  fear.  The  weakest  minds 
have  generally  the  greatest  share  of  it,  for  which 
reason  none  are  more  compassionate  than  women 
and  children."  Such  a  theory  of  the  passions  is  a 
legitimate,  if  onesided,  deduction  from  the  natur- 
alistic philosophy  as  it  left  the  hands  of  Locke; 
the  ethical  conclusions,  it  will  be  observed,  have 


NIETZSCHE  i6i 

a  curious  similarity  with  the  later  system  of 
Nietzsche.  The  theory  of  Mandeville  was  too 
violently  in  opposition  to  the  common  sense  of 
mankind  to  produce  much  direct  influence,  but  it 
remained  as  a  great  scandal  of  letters.  It  brought 
the  author  an  indictment  before  the  grand  jury 
of  Middlesex  for  impiety;  and  as  late  as  1765 
Diderot,  in  his  criticism  of  a  large  and  inartis- 
tic painting,  could  be  understood  when  he  ex- 
claimed: "What  shall  we  do  with  such  a  thing? 
You  who  defend  the  Fable  of  the  Bees  will  no 
doubt  say  to  me  that  it  brings  money  to  the  sell- 
ers of  paints  and  canvas.  To  the  devil  with  so- 
phists !  With  them  good  and  evil  no  longer  exist ! ' ' 
The  real  exegete  of  Locke's  Scripture,  he  who 
made  naturalism  current  by  finding  within  it, 
without  recourse  to  any  extrinsic  law,  a  sufficient 
principle  of  moral  conduct,  was  David  Hume. 
Hume's  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  published  in 
1739  and  1740,  fell  dead  from  the  press,  and  was 
in  part  repudiated  when  in  175 1,  he  put  forth  his 
shorter  Inquiry  into  the  Principles  of  Morals.  Yet 
there  is  in  reality  no  fundamental  difference  be- 
tween his  earlier  and  later  theories,  and  the  doc- 
trines which  passed  to  Rousseau  and  Kant  were 
fully  and  definitely  pronounced  in  the  Treatise 
written  before  the  author  had  completed  his 
twenty-ninth  year.  Those  doctrines  had  been 
foreshadowed,  so  to  speak,  by  Shaftesbury,  but 
Shaftesbury,  though  one  of  the  leading  influences 


i62    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

of  the  age,  was  too  confused  or  indolent  a  thinker 
to  clear  his  ideas  of  the  gorgeous  rhetoric  that 
involved  them.  With  Hume  rhetoric  was  sup- 
planted by  an  insatiable  desire  of  analysis.  He 
:  begins  by  resolving  the  world  into  an  absolute 
:  flux,  wherein  the  only  reality  for  us  is  a  succes- 
sion of  sensations,  beyond  which  all  is  a  fiction  of 
the  imagination.  I  enter  a  room  and  perceive  a 
certain  chair;  if  after  an  interval  of  time  I  return 
to  the  room  and  perceive  the  same  chair,  the  feel- 
ing that  this  object  of  perception  and  the  former 
are  identical  is  merely  created  by  my  "propen- 
sity to  feign."  Our  notion  of  cause  and  effect  is 
likewise  a  fiction,  due  to  the  fact  that  we  have 
perceived  a  certain  sequence  of  phenomena  a 
number  of  times,  and  have  come  to  associate 
them  together;  we  have  no  real  assurance  that  a 
similar  sequence  will  happen  another  time.  And 
human  nature  is  equally  a  flux,  without  any  ele- 
ment of  unity  or  identity.  An  idea  is  nothing 
more  than  a  reproduced  and  fainter  sensation, 
and  all  knowledge  is  nothing  more  than  probabil- 
ity. There  is  no  persistent  self,  but  only  a  "suc- 
cession of  related  ideas  and  impressions,  of  which 
we  have  an  intimate  memory  and  consciousness." 
In  this  flood  of  sensations  pleasure  and  pain  alone 
can  be  the  motives  of  action,  and  to  pleasure  and 
pain  alone  our  notion  of  virtue  and  vice  must  be 
ultimately  reduced. 

In  his  analysis  of  the  moral  sense  Hume  begins 


NIETZSCHE  163 

with  the  conception  of  property,  upon  which 
he  raises  the  superstructure  of  society.  Self-inter- 
est is  fundamentally  opposed  to  admitting  the 
claims  of  others  to  possession,  but  the  only  way  I 
can  be  assured  of  retaining  what  I  possess  is  by 
allowing  my  neighbour  to  retain  what  he  pos- 
sesses. Justice,  then,  is  a  mutual  concession  of 
self-interests  for  the  advantage  of  each.  A  just 
act  is  an  act  that  is  useful  at  once  to  society  and 
the  individual  by  strengthening  the  security  of 
property.  But  a  just  act  is  not  in  itself  virtuous ; 
the  sense  of  virtue  is  the  agreeable  emotion,  or 
passion,  as  Hume  calls  it,  that  comes  to  us  when 
we  perceive  a  man  perform  an  act  of  justice 
which,  by  the  power  of  throwing  ourselves  sym- 
pathetically into  the  position  of  others,  we  feel  to 
be  indirectly  useful  to  ourselves.  The  pleasurable  { 
emotion  of  self-interest  is  the  motive  of  just  < 
action,  the  pleasurable  emotion  of  sympathy  with 
an  act  of  justice  in  which  we  are  not  immediately 
concerned  is  the  sense  of  virtue.  Besides  this  pas-j 
sion  of  justice  which  is  necessary  for  the  very  ex-' 
istence  of  society,  Hume  recognized  certain  minor 
passions,  such  as  benevolence,  which  are  not  in- 
stigated by  mutual  self-interest,  but  spring  di- 
rectly from  the  inherent  tendency  of  man  to  sym- 
pathize with  his  fellows.  Manifestly  there  are 
serious  difficulties  in  this  reduction  of  virtue  and 
vice  to  agreeable  and  disagreeable  passions.  It 
leaves  no  motive  for  virtue  when  the  individual 


i64    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

has  become  conscious  of  the  basis  of  justice  in  the 
mutual  concessions  of  self-interest,  and  asks  why- 
he  should  not  foster  this  concession  by  the  ap- 
pearance of  surrendering  his  native  rights  while 
secretly  grasping  all  in  his  power;  it  furnishes  no 
clear  difference  between  the  passions  which  actu- 
ate the  hero  and  the  gourmet,  between  a  Nathan 
Hale  uttering  his  regret  that  he  had  only  one  life 
to  give  for  his  country  and  a  Talleyrand  saying 
placidly,  "Fate  cannot  harm  me;  I  have  dined." 
The  lacunae  point  to  some  vital  error  in  Hume's 
philosophy,  but  his  theory  of  self-interest  and 
sympathy  was  none  the  less  the  first  clear  expres- 
sion of  a  revolutionary  change  in  thought  and 
morals. 

Twenty  years  after  the  date  of  Hume's  Treatise 
his  friend  Adam  Smith  published  The  Theory  oj 
Moral  Sentiments,  in  which  the  doctrine  of  sym- 
pathy was  carried  a  long  step  forward.  Utility  is 
still  the  measure  of  virtue  and  vice,  but  a  man 
now  not  only  has  the  sense  of  virtue  from  sym- 
pathy with  an  act  of  justice,  but  is  himself  led  to 
act  justly  through  a  sense  of  sympathy  with  the 
feelings  that  his  conduct  will  arouse  in  others. 
Furthermore,  through  the  habit  of  reflection  we 
come  to  harbour  a  kind  of  impersonal  sympathy 
with,  or  antipathy  to,  our  own  acts  similar  to  that 
which  we  feel  for  the  acts  of  others.  "  It  is  not," 
says  Smith,  "the  love  of  our  neighbour,  it  is  not 
the  love  of  mankind,  which  upon  many  occasions 


NIETZSCHE  165 

prompts  us  to  the  practice  of  those  divine  virtues. 
It  is  a  stronger  love,  a  more  powerful  affection 
which  generally  takes  place  upon  such  occasions; 
the  love  of  what  is  honourable  and  noble,  of  the 
grandeur,  and  dignity,  and  superiority  of  our  own 
characters."  Thus  in  the  system  of  Adam  Smith 
sympathy  becomes  the  actuating  cause  of  virtue 
and  is  even  able  to  transform  self-love  into  a  mo- 
tive wearing  the  mask  of  absolute  virtue. 

Not  the  least  significant  feature  of  the  advance 
from  Hume's  philosophy  is  the  introduction  of 
the  word  "sentiment"  into  the  title  of  Adam 
Smith's  treatise,  for  during  the  remaining  years 
of  the  century  the  chief  development  of  the  doc- 
trine of  sympathy  in  England  is  found  in  the 
novelists  of  the  sentimental  school.  ''Sentimental! 
what  is  that?"  is  the  record  in  Wesley's  Journal 
after  reading  Sterne's  Sentimental  Journey.  "It 
is  not  English :  he  might  as  well  say  Continental. 
It  is  not  sense.  It  conveys  no  determinate  idea; 
yet  one  fool  makes  many.  And  this  nonsensical 
word  (who  would  believe  it?)  is  become  a  fash- 
ionable one ! ' '  The  hypercritical  evangelist  might 
have  been  told  that  if  the  word  conveyed  no  de- 
terminate idea,  it  at  least  represented  a  very 
definite  force  and  had  a  perfectly  clear  origin. 
It  was  nothing  else  but  the  logical  outcome  of 
Hume's  and  Adam  Smith's  theory  of  sympathy 
entirely  dissevered  from  any  supernatural  prin- 
ciple as  the  source  of  virtue.   From  1760  to  1768 


i66     THE    DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

Sterne  was  issuing  the  successive  volumes  of 
Tristram  Shandy  and  the  Sentimental  Journey, 
in  which  this  virtue  of  sentimental  sympathy, 
reduced  to  pure  sensibility,  if  not  to  morbidly 
sensitive  nerves,  and  utterly  freed  from  reason 
or  character  or  the  law  of  cause  and  effect,  ap- 
pears full-blown.  Whatever  practical  moral  these 
books  may  have  is  to  be  found  in  the  episode 
of  my  Uncle  Toby  tenderly  letting  the  buzzing 
fly  out  of  the  window  or  in  the  tears  of  the  pil- 
grim over  the  carcass  of  a  dead  ass.  If  Sterne's 
sentiment  was  apt  to  grow  a  trifle  maudlin,  that 
of  his  contemporary,  Henry  Brooke,  was  a  con- 
stant downflow  of  soul.  "This  is  a  book  of  tears," 
says  a  modern  editor  of  Brooke's  Fool  of  Quality; 
"but  they  are  tears  that  purge  and  purify  with 
pity  and  compassion."  I  am  inclined  to  think 
the  purging  for  many  readers  to-day  would  come 
more  from  ridicule  than  from  pity;  but  the  book 
is  notable  as  an  attempt  to  depict  a  life  made 
completely  virtuous  by  the  new  sentiment  of 
sympathy  for  all  mankind.  Hearken  for  a  minute 
to  one  of  the  sermons  of  the  pious  Mentor  of  the 
story  to  his  youthful  charge: 

I  once  told  you,  my  darling  [he  says],  that  all  the  evil 
which  is  in  you  belongs  to  yourself,  and  that  all  the  good 
which  is  in  you  belongs  to  your  God.  . . . 

Remember,  therefore,  this  distinction  in  yourself  and 
all  others;  remember  that,  when  you  feel  or  see  any 
instance  of  selfishness,  you  feel  and  see  the  coveting, 


NIETZSCHE  167 

grudging,  and  grappling  of  the  creature ;  but  that,  when 
you  feel  or  see  any  instance  of  benevolence,  you  feel  and 
see  the  informing  influence  of  your  God.  All  possible 
vice  and  malignity  subsists  in  the  one ;  all  possible  virtue, 
all  possible  beauty,  all  possible  blessedness,  subsists  in 
the  other. 


Now  two  things  are  remarkable  in  this  passage, 
and  would  stand  out  even  more  plainly  if  I  should 
quote  at  greater  length.  First,  we  have  got  com- 
pletely away  from  the  utilitarian  theory  of  social 
virtue  as  a  mutual  concession  of  self-interests, 
which  was  propounded  by  Hobbes  and  essen- 
tially retained  by  Locke  and  Hume  and  Adam 
Smith,  though  gradually  overlaid  by  the  modi- 
fying power  of  sympathy.  In  Brooke's  philos- 
ophy self-interest  and  benevolence  are  finally 
and  absolutely  sundered:  the  one  is  all  vice,  the 
other  is  all  virtue.  And,  secondly,  we  may  see 
here  how  far  this  newer  notion  of  sympathy  is 
removed  from  the  compassion  of  Hobbes's  Pla- 
tonizing  contemporary ;  the  contrast  is  even  more 
vivid  from  the  fact  that  Brooke  gives  a  thor- 
oughly Christian  turn  to  the  expression  of  the 
"eternal  law  of  benevolence,"  as  he  calls  it.  In 
Henry  More  the  "kindly  compassion"  for  the 
world  is  entirely  subsidiary  to  the  rapture  of 
a  spirit  caught  up  in  celestial  contemplation, 
whereas  in  The  Fool  of  Quality  love  is  indeed 
planted  in  us  by  a  divine  hand  as  a  force  contrary 
to  what  Brooke  calls  "the  very  horrible  and  de- 


i68    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

testable  nature  of  Self,"  but  its  total  meaning 
and  effect  are  in  a  sentimental  dissolution  of 
man's  self  in  the  idea  of  humanity.  We  have 
reached,  that  is  to  say,  the  genuine  springs  of  hu- 
manitarianism. 

Meanwhile  the  doctrine  of  sympathy  had 
passed  in  France  into  the  pen,  if  not  into  the 
heart,  of  one  whose  genius  was  to  give  it  a  new 
colour  and  a  power  sufficient  to  crush  and  re- 
mould societies.  It  is  not  necessary  to  go  at 
large  into  well-known  theories  of  Rousseau.  In 
his  Discourse  on  Inequality  (1755)  and  his  Social 
Contract  (1762)  he,  like  his  English  predecessors, 
starts  with  the  motives  of  self-interest  and  sym- 
pathy, but  soon  gives  them  a  different  direction. 
He  saw,  as  did  Hobbes  and  Hume,  that  property 
depends  on  the  mutual  concessions  of  self-inter- 
est, but  he  saw  further  that  on  this  basis  alone 
society  and  traditional  morality  were  in  a  condi- 
tion of  unstable  equilibrium,  were  in  fact  founded 
on  injustice  and  not  on  justice  at  all.  He  per- 
ceived no  relief  from  this  hazardous  condition  ex- 
cept through  counteracting  self-interest  by  the 
equally  innate  and  human  force  of  sympathy, 
which  was  somehow  to  be  called  into  action  as 
the  volonte  generale,  or  mystical  will  of  the  people, 
embracing  and  absorbing  the  wills  and  desires  of 
individuals  into  one  harmonious  purpose. 

One  step  more  and  we  shall  have  ended  this 
preliminary  history  of  the  growth  oj^  sympathy  as 


NIETZSCHE  169 

.the  controlling  principle  of  monals^- .From  Rous- 
seau it  passed  into  Germany  and  became  one  oT 
the  mainsprings  of  the~romanfic  movement.  Vou 
will  find  its  marks  everywhere  in  that  literature: 
ilL-the- peculiarly  sentimental  attitude  towards 
nature,  in  the  impossible  yearning  of  the  schone 
Seelen  for  brotherhood,  in  the  whole  philosophy 
of  feeling.  I  am  not  sure  that  it  does  not  lurk  in 
Kant's  fundamental  rule  of  morahty:  '.'Act  on  a  ^ 
maxim  which  thou  canst  will  to  be  law  universal " ;  '■"'^^'^'^ 
it  certainly  lives  and  finds  its  highest  expression 
In  Bchleiermacher's  attempt  to  reunite  the  indi- 
vidual with  the  infinite  by  dissolving  the  mind 
in  sympathetic  contemplation  of  the  flowing  uni- 
yerse  of  things.  And  in  this  heated,  unwhole- 
some atmosphere  of  German  romanticism  sprang 
up  and  blossomed  our  modern  ethics  of  human- 
itarianism.  The  theories  of  socialism  are  diverse  ^ 
and  often  superficially  contradictory;  they  pro- 
fess to  stand  on  a  foundation  of  economic  law 
and  the  necessity  of  evolution,  but  in  reality  they 
spring  from  ^^ousseau's  ideal  of  sympathy  work- 
ing itself  out  as  a  force  sufficient  in  itself  to  com- 
bine the  endless  oppositions  of  self-interest  in  the 
vglonte  generale,  and  from  the  romantic  concep- 
tion of  the  infinite  as  an  emotion  obtained  from 
smrehder  of  self  to  the  universal  flux.  From  the 
former  come  the  political  schemes  of  human- 
itarianism;  from  the  latter  its  religious  sanction 
and  fanatical  intolerance.  ~" 


I70    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

This  survey  of  the  growth  of  js£jf.dn-j£.i:e&t.and 
sympathy  may  seem   a  long  parenthesis  in  the 
study  of  Nietzsche,  but  I  do  not  see  how  other- 
wise we  can  understand  the  problem  with  which 
he  struggled,  or  the  meaning  of  his  proposed  so- 
;  lution.  Now,  Nietzsche's  writing,  as  I  have  said, 
/  is  too  often  in  a  style  of  spasmodic  commonplace, 
(  displaying  a  tortured  effort  to  appear  profound. 
But  it  is  in  places  also  singularly  vivid,  with  a 
power  of  clinging  epithet  and  a  picturesque  ex- 
aggeration or  grotesqueness  that  may  remind  one 
of  Carlyle.    Consider,  for  example,  part  of  the 
chapter  of  Zarathustra  entitled  Redemption: 

As  Zarathustra  one  day  passed  over  the  great  bridge, 
he  was  surrounded  by  cripples  and  beggars,  and  a 
hunchback  spake  thus  to  him: 

"  Behold,  Zarathustra,  even  the  people  learn  from 
thee,  and  acquire  faith  in  thy  doctrine;  but  for  these  to 
believe  fully  in  thee,  one  thing  is  yet  needful  —  thou 
must  first  of  all  convince  us  cripples."  . . . 

Then  answered  Zarathustra  unto  him  who  so  spake: 
. . .  Yet  is  this  the  smallest  thing  to  me  since  I  have  been 
amongst  men,  that  one  man  lacks  an  eye,  another  an 
ear,  a  third  a  leg,  and  that  others  have  lost  their  tongue, 
or  their  nose,  or  their  head. 

I  see  and  have  seen  a  worse  thing  and  diverse  things 
so  monstrous  that  of  all  I  might  not  speak  and  of  some 
I  might  not  keep  silence:  I  have  seen  human  beings  to 
whom  everything  was  lacking,  except  that  of  one  thing 
they  had  too  much  —  men  who  are  nothing  more  than 
a  big  eye,  or  a  big  mouth,  or  a  big  belly,  or  something 
else  big  —  reversed  cripples  I  name  such  men. 

And  when  I  came  out  of  my  solitude  and  for  the  first 


NIETZSCHE  171 

time  passed  over  this  bridge,  then  I  could  not  trust  my 
eyes,  and  looked,  and  looked  again,  and  I  said  at  last: 
"That  is  an  ear!  an  ear  as  big  as  a  man!"  I  looked  still 
more  attentively;  and  actually  there  did  move  under  the 
ear  something  that  was  pitiably  small  and  poor  and  slim. 
And  in  truth  this  immense  ear  was  perched  on  a  small 
thin  stalk  —  and  the  stalk  was  a  man!  With  a  glass  be- 
fore your  eyes  you  might  even  recognize  further  a  tiny 
envious  countenance,  and  also  that  a  bloated  soullet 
dangled  at  the  stalk.  The  people  told  me,  however,  that 
the  big  ear  was  not  only  a  man,  but  a  great  man,  a 
genius.  But  I  never  believed  the  people  when  they 
spake  of  great  men  —  and  I  hold  to  my  belief  that  it  was 
a  reversed  cripple,  who  had  too  little  of  everything  and 
too  much  of  one  thing. . . . 

Verily,  my  friends,  I  walk  amongst  men  as  amongst 
the  fragments  and  limbs  of  men! 

This  is  the  terrible  thing  to  mine  eye,  that  I  find  men 
broken  up  and  scattered  as  on  a  field  of  battle  and 
butchery. 

And  when  mine  eye  fleeth  from  the  present  to  the  by- 
gone, it  findeth  always  the  same:  fragments  and  mem- 
bers and  fearful  chance  —  but  no  men  I 

The  present  and  the  bygone  upon  earth  —  alas,  my 
friends,  that  is  to  me  the  intolerable;  and  I  should  not 
know  how  to  live  were  I  not  a  seer  also  of  that  which 
must  come. 

A  seer,  a  wilier,  a  creator,  a  future  itself,  and  a  bridge 
to  the  future  —  and,  alas,  also  as  it  were  a  cripple  upon 
this  bridge:  all  that  is  Zarathustra. . . . 

T^pjedeem  what  is  past,  and  to  transform  every  "It 
was"  into  "Thus  would  I  have  it!"  —  that  alone  I  call 
redemption.  . . . 

To  will  liberateth ;  but  what  is  that  named  which  still 
putteth  the  liberator  in  chains  ? 

"  It  was"  —  so  is  named  the  Will's  gnashing  of  teeth 


172    THE   DRIFT   OF  ROMANTICISM 

and  loneliest  tribulation.  Impotent  before  the  thing 
that  has  been  done,  of  all  the  past  the  Will  is  a  malicious 
spectator.^ 

That  is  not  only  an  example  of  Nietzsche's 
vivid  and  personal  style  at  its  best,  but  it  also 
contains  the  gist  of  his  message  to  the  world.  For 
there  is  this  to  be  observed  in  regard  to  Nietz- 
sche's works:  to  one  who  dips  into  them  at  ran- 
dom, they  are  likely  to  seem  dark  and  tangled. 
His  manner  of  expressing  himself  in  aphorisms 
and  of  uttering  half-truths  in  emphatic  finality 
gives  t^b  his  writing  an  appearance  of  complex- 
ity and  groping  uncertainty;  but  a  little  persist- 
ence in  reading  will  show  that  his  theory  of  life, 
though  never  systematized,  was  really  quite  sim- 
ple, and  that  he  had  in  fact  a  few  master  ideas 
which  he  repeated  in  endlessly  diversified  lan- 
guage. It  soon  becomes  easy  to  disentangle  this 
main  current  of  his  ideas  from  the  sporadic  ob- 
servations on  life  and  art,  often  sound  and  ex- 
tremely acute,  which  have  no  relation  to  it.  Any 
one  of  his  major  works  will  afford  a  fairly  com- 
plete view  of  his  central  doctrine :  it  will  be  found 
in  Human  All-Too-Human  to  implicate  pretty 
fully  the  Bergsonian  philosophy  and  two  or  three 
other  much-vaunted  philosophies  of  the  self- 
evolving  flux;  in  Beyond  Good  and  Evil  the  eth- 

*  The  quotations  from  Nietzsche  in  this  essay  are  for  the  most  part 
based  on  the  authorized  translations  of  his  works,  but  I  have  had  the 
German  text  before  me  and  have  altered  the  English  at  times  consider- 
ably. 


NIETZSCHE  173 

ical  aspects  of  the  new  liberty  are  chiefly  consid- 
ered ;  in  Zarathustra,  on  the  whole  the  greatest  of 
his  works,  he  writes  in  a  tone  of  lyrical  egotism 
and  prophetic  brooding  on  his  own  destiny;  in 
The  Will  to  Power  there  is  an  attempt  to  reduce 
his  scattered  intentions  to  a  logical  system,  but 
unfortunately  that  work  was  never  finished,  and 
is  printed  largely  from  his  hasty  notes.  What 
probably  first  impresses  one  in  any  of  these  books 
is  Nietzsche's  violent  antipathy  to  the  past  — 
"'It  was'  —  so  is  named  the  Will's  gnashing  of 
teeth  and  loneliest  tribulation.  Impotent  before 
the  thing  that  has  been  done,  of  all  the  past  the 
Will  is  a  malicious  spectator."  In  this  appar- 
ently sweeping  condemnation  of  tradition  all  that 
has  been  held  sacred  is  denounced  in  language 
that  sounds  occasionally  like  the  fury  of  a  mad- 
man. So  he  exclaims:  "To  the  botching  of  man- 
kind and  the  allowing  of  it  to  putrefy  was  given 
the  name  '  God  ' "  ;  and  to  our  long  idealization 
of  the  eternal  feminine  he  has  only  the  brusque 
reply:  "Thou  goest  to  women?  Forget  not  thy 
whip!" 

But  as  we  become  better  versed  in  Nietzsche's 
extreme  manner  of  expression,  we  find  that  his 
condemnation  of  the  past  is  by  no  means  indis- 
criminate, that  in  truth  his  denunciations  are 
directed  to  a  particular  aspect  of  history.  In  the 
classical  world  this  distinction  takes  the  form  of 
a  harsh  and  unreal  contrast  between  the  Diony- 


,^'^^ 


174     THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

siac  principle  of  unrest  and  growth  and  crea- 
tion for  which  he  expresses  the  highest  regard, 
and  the  Apollonian  principle  of  rest  and  renun- 
^d^f.  ciation  and  contraction  for  which,  as  Platonism, 
[^  he  has  the  deepest  aversion.  The  same  distinc- 
tion really  holds  in  his  attitude  towards  religion, 
although  here  his  feelings  are  not  so  clearly 
defined.  For  the  Old  Testament  and  its  virile, 
human  poetry,  for  instance,  he  admits  great  re- 
verence, reserving  his  spleen  for  the  New  Testa- 
ment and  its  faith.  In  one  of  the  aphorisms  of  his 
virulent  attack  on  Christianity,  entitled  appro- 
priately Antichrist,  he  writes: 

One  does  well  to  put  on  gloves  when  reading  the  New 
Testament.  The  neighbourhood  of  so  much  impurity 
almost  forces  one  to  do  so.  ...  I  have  searched  the  New 
Testament  in  vain  for  a  single  sympathetic  trait;  there 
is  nothing  in  it  that  could  be  called  free,  kind,  frank,  up- 
right. Humanity  has  not  taken  its  first  steps  in  this 
book  —  instincts  of  purity  are  lacking.  There  are  only 
bad  instincts  in  the  New  Testament;  and  there  is  not 
even  the  courage  of  these  bad  instincts.  All  is  cowardice 
in  it,  all  is  closed  eyes  and  self-delusion.  Any  book  is 
pure  after  one  has  read  the  New  Testament ;  for  exam- 
ple, immediately  after  St.  Paul,  I  read  with  delight  that 
charming  wanton  mocker,  Petronius,  of  whom  one  might 
say  what  Domenico  Boccaccio  wrote  about  Cesare  Bor- 
gia to  the  Duke  of  Parma :  d  tutto  festo. 

To  understand  these  diatribes  we  must  re- 
member that  there  were  two  elements  in  Christ- 
ianity as  it  developed  in  the  early  centuries:  on 


NIETZSCHE  175 

the  one  hand,  the  strong  aspiring  faith  of  a  peo- 
plelrTthe  vigour  of  youth  and  eager  to  bring  into 
life  fresh  and  unworn  spiritual  values,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  depression  and  world -weariness 
which  haunted  the  decadent  heterogeneous  peo- 
ple of  Alexandria  and  the  East.  Now  it  is  clear 
that  for  the  former  of  these  Nietzsche  had  no  un- 
derstanding, since  it  lay  quite  beyond  his  range 
of  vision,  whereas  for  the  latter  he  had  a  very 
intimate  understanding  and  a  bitter  detestation. 
Hence  his  almost  unreserved  rejection  of  Christ- 
ianity as  a  product  of  corruption  and  race  im- 

It  is  a  mistake  [he  says  in  The  Will  to  Power]  to  imag- 
ine that,  with  Christianity,  an  ingenuous  and  youthful 
people  rose  against  an  old  culture.  .  .  .  We  understand 
nothing  of  the  psychology  of  Christianity,  if  we  suppose 
that  it  was  the  expression  of  revived  youth  among  a 
people,  or  of  the  resuscitated  strength  of  a  race.  It  is 
rather  a  typical  form  of  decadence,  of  moral  softening, 
and  of  hysteria,  amid  a  general  hotchpotch  of  races  and 
people  that  had  lost  all  aims  and  had  grown  weary  and 
sick.  The  wonderful  company  which  gathered  round 
this  master  seducer  of  the  populace,  would  not  be  at  all 
out  of  place  in  a  Russian  novel:  all  the  diseases  of  the 
nerves  seem  to  give  one  another  a  rendezvous  in  this 
crowd. 

And  elsewhere  he  says,  more  generally : 

Long  pondering  over  the  physiology  of  exhaustion 
forced  upon  me  the  question:  to  what  extent  the  judge- 
ments of  exhausted  people  had  percolated  into  the  world 
of  values. 


176    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

The  result  at  which  I  arrived  was  as  startling  as  it 
could  possibly  be  —  even  for  one  like  myself  who  was 
already  at  home  in  many  a  strange  world.  I  found  that 
all  prevailing  valuations  —  that  is  to  say,  all  those  which 
had  gained  ascendancy  over  humanity,  or  at  least  over 
its  tamer  portions,  could  be  traced  back  to  the  judge- 
ment ofLjgxhausted  peoj)le. 

Now  all  this  is  the  perfectly  correct  statement 
of  a  half-truth,  as  any  one  must  admit  who  is 
familiar  with  the  religious  history  of  the  early 
centuries;  it  is  largely  correct  also  as  regards  the 
romantic  revival  of  Alexandrianism,  which  in 
Nietzsche's  eyes  made  up  the  whole  of  modern 
Christianity.  The  fact  is  that  his  mind  was  really 
concerned  with  certain  aspects  of  society  as  it 
existed  about  him,  and  his  hostility  to  the  past 
was  not  to  the  dead  centuries  in  themselves,  but 
to  what  remained  over  from  them  in  the  present 
—  for  what,  after  all,  is  there  for  any  man  in  the 
past  to  hate  or  fear,  except  as  it  lives  and  will  not 
be  put  away?  In  the  sickness  of  his  soul  Nietzsche 
looked  abroad  over  the  Western  world,  and  saw, 
or  thought  he  saw,  everywhere  futility  and  pur- 
poselessness  and  pessimistic  uncertainty  of  the 
i  values  of  life.  An  ideal,  as  he  sees  it,  is  embraced 
;  only  when  a  man's  grip  on  the  real  world  and  its 
good  has  been  weakened ;  in  the  end  such  super- 
[  natural  ideals,  as  they  are  without  foundation  in 
1  fact,  lose  their  hold  on  the  human  mind,  and 
mankind,  having  sacrificed  Its  sense  of  actual 


NIETZSCHE  177 

valuesand  having  nursed  the  cause  of  decay,  is 
left  helpless  and  joyless.  This  condition  he  calls 
^Nihilism.  "People  have  not  yet  seen  what  is 
so  perfectly  obvious,"  he  says,  — "namely,  that 
Pessimism  is  not  a  problem  but  a  symptom  — 
that  the  term  ought  to  be  replaced  by  '  Nihilism ' ; 
that  the  question,  'to  be  or  not  to  be'  is  itself 
an  illness,  a  sign  of  degeneracy,  an  idiosyncrasy." 
And  in  the  first  part  of  The  Will  to  Power  he  un- 
folds this  modern  disease  in  all  its  hideousness. 
The  restless  activities  of  our  life  he  interprets  as 
so  many  attempts  to  escape  from  the  gloom  of 
purposelessness,  as  so  many  varieties  of  self- 
stupefaction.  No  one  can  read  his  list  of  these 
efforts  without  shuddering  recollection  of  what 
decadent  music  and  literature  and  painting  have 
produced : 

In  one's  heart  of  hearts,  not  to  know,  whither? 
Emptiness.  The  attempt  to  rise  superior  to  it  all  by 
means  of  emotional  intoxication:  emotional  intoxication 
in  the  form  of  music,  in  the  form  of  cruelty  in  the  tragic 
joy  over  the  ruin  of  the  noblest,  and  in  the  form  of  blind, 
gushing  enthusiasm  over  individual  men  or  distinct 
periods  (in  the  form  of  hatred,  etc.).  The  attempt  to 
work  blindly,  like  a  scientific  instrument;  to  keep  an  eye 
on  the  many  small  joys,  like  an  investigator,  for  instance 
(modesty  towards  one's  self) ;  . . .  the  mysticism  of  the 
voluptuousjoj'  of  eternal  emptiness;  art  "  for  art's  sake  " 
("le  fait"),  "immaculate  investigation,"  in  the  form  of 
narcotics  against  the  disgust  of  one's  self;  any  kind 
of  incessant  work,  any  kind  of  small  foolish  fanaticism. 


178    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

The  attempt  to  maintain  Christianity  amidst 
a  nihilistic  society  which  has  lost  even  its  false 
ideals,  can  have  only  one  result.  As  these  super- 
natural ideals  were  evoked  by  the  weaker  mass  of 
the  race  to  cover  its  subjection  to  the  few  stronger 
individuals,  so  when  belief  in  the  other  world  has 
perished,  the  only  defence  that  remains  is  the  hu- 
manitarian exaltation  of  the  humble  and  common 
and  undistinguished  in  itself  as  a  kind  of  simula- 
crum of  Christianity,  the  unideal  sympathy  of 
man  for  man  as  a  political  law,  the  whole  brood 
of  socialistic  schemes  which  are  based  on  the 
notion  of  universal  brotherhood.  These,  the  im- 
meSiate  offspring  of  Rousseauism  and  German 
/  romanticism,  are,  as  Nietzsche  saw,  the  actual  re- 
^  ligion  of  the  world  to-day ;  and  against  these,  and 
against  the  past  as  the  source  of  these,  his  dia- 
tribes are  really  directed.  His  protest  is  against 
"sympathy  with  the  lowly  and  the  suffering  as 
a  standard  for  the  elevation  of  the  soul.^' 

Christianity  [he  exclaims]  is  a  degenerative  move- 
ment, consisting  of  all  kinds  of  decaying  and  excre- 
mental  elements.  ...  It  appeals  to  the  disinherited 
everywhere;  it  consists  of  a  foundation  of  resentment 
against  all  that  is  successful  and  dominant:  it  is  in  need 
of  a  symbol  which  represents  the  damnation  of  every 
thing  successful  and  dominant.  It  is  opposed  to  every 
form  of  intellectual  movement,  to  all  philosophy ;  it  takes 
up  the  cudgels  for  idiots,  and  utters  a  curse  upon  all 
intellect.  Resentment  against  those  who  are  gifted, 
learned,  intellectually  independent:  in  all  these  it  sus- 
pects the  elements  of  success  and  domination. 


NIETZSCHE  179 

All  this  is  merely  Nietzsche's  spasmodic  way 
of  depicting  the  uneasiness  of  the  age,  which  has 
been  the  theme  of  innumerable  poets  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  —  of  Matthew  Arnold,  to  take  an 
instance,  in  his  gloomy  diagnosis  of  the  modern 
soul.  And  to  a  certain  point  the  cause  of  this 
nihilism,  to  use  Nietzsche's  word,  is  the  same  for 
him  as  for  Arnold.  They  both  attribute  it  to  the 
shattering  of  definite  ideals  that  had  so  long 
ruled  the  world,  and  especially  to  the  waning  of 
religious  faith.  But  here  the  two  diagnosticians 
part  company.  Arnold  looked  for  health  to  the 
establishing  of  new  ideals  and  to  the  growth  of  a 
fresh  and  sounder  faith  in  the  Eternal,  though  he 
may  have  failed  in  his  attempt  to  define  this  new 
faith.  Nietzsche,  on  the  contrary,  regarded  all 
ideals  and  all  faith  as  themselves  a  product  of 
decadence  and  the  sure  cause  of  deeper  decay. 
"Objection,  evasion,  joyous  distrust^  and  love  of 
irony,"  he  says,  "are  signs  of  health;  everything 
absolute  belongs  to  pathology."  Nihilism,  as  the 
first  consequence  of  the  loss  of  ideals,  may  be  a 
state  of  hideous  anarchy,  but  it  is  also  the  neces- 
sary transition  to  health.  If,  instead  of  relapsing 
into  the  idealistic  source  of  evil,  the  eyes  of  man- 
kind are  strengthened  to  look  boldly  at  the  facts 
of  existence,  then  will  take  place  what  he  calls 
the  Transvaluation  of  all  Values,  and  truth  wilL 
be  founded  on  the  naked,  imperishable  reality.. 
There  is  no  eternal  calm  at  the  centre  of  this  mov- 


i8o    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

ing  universe;  "all  is  flux";  there  is  nothing  real 
"but  our  world  of  desires  and  passions,"  and  "we 
cannot  sink  or  rise  to  any  other  '  reality '  save  just 
the  reality  of  our  impulses  —  for  thinking  itself  is 
only  a  relation  of  these  impulses  to  one  another." 
So  be  it!  When  a  man  has  faced  this  truth 
calmly  and  bravely  and  definitely,,__then_the 
whole  system  of  morality  which  has  been  im- 
posed upon  society  by  those  who  regarded  life  as 
subordinate  to  an  eternal  ideal  outside  of  the  flux 
and  contrary  to  the  stream  of  human  desires  and 
passions  —  then  the  whole  law  of  good  and  evil 
which  was  evolved  by  the  weak  to  protect  them- 
selves against  those  who  were  fitted  to  live  mas- 
terfully in  the  flux,  crumbles  away;  that  man  has 
passed  Beyond  Good  and  Evil. 

Mankind  is  thus  liberated  from  the  herd-law, 
the  false  values  have  been  abolished,  but  what 
new  values  take  their  place?  The  answer  to  this 
question  Nietzsche  found  by  going  to  Darwinism 
and  raising  the  evolutionary  struggle  for  exist- 
ence into  new  significance ;  he  would  call  it,  not 
the  Schopenhauerian  will  to  live,  but  the  Will  to 
Power.  He  thus  expresses  the  new  theory  in  the 
mouth  of  Zarathustra : 

Wherever  I  found  a  living  thing,  there  found  I  Will  to 
Power;  and  even  in  the  will  of  the  servant  found  I  the 
will  to  be  master.  . . . 

And  this  secret  spake  Life  herself  unto  me.  "  Behold," 
said  she,  "  I  am  that  which  must  ever  surpass  itself.". . . 


NIETZSCHE  i8i 

He  certainly  did  not  hit  the  truth  who  shot  at  it  the 
formula:  "Will  to  Existence";  that  will  —  doth  not 
exist ! 

For  that  which  is  not,  cannot  will;  that,  however, 
which  is  in  existence  —  how  could  it  still  strive  for  exist- 
ence! 

Only  where  there  is  life,  is  there  also  will:  not,  how- 
ever. Will  to  Life,  but  —  so  teach  I  thee  —  W'ill  to 
Power ! 

This  is  Nietzsche's  transvaluation  of  all  values, 
_the  change  from  the  morality  of  good  and  evil  de- 
pending on  supernatural  rewards  to  the  non- 
morality  of  the  purely  natural  Will  to  Power. 
And  as  the  former  idealism  resulted  in  the  sup- 
pression of  distinction  and  in  the  supremacy  of 
the  feeble,  so  the  regime  of  the  Will  to  Power 
must  bring  back  into  society  the  sharp  division  of 
those  who  have  power  and  those  who  have  it  not, 
of  the  true  philosophers  who  have  the  instinct 
to  surpass  and  the  slaves  whose  function  it  is  to 
serve  and  obey.  The  philosopher,  to  use  Nietz- 
sche's famous  term,  is  the  Superman,  the  Ueber- 
mensch.  He  has  passed  beyond  good  and  evil, 
and  Nietzsche  often  describes  him  in  language 
which  implies  the  grossest  immorality;  but  this  is 
merely  an  iconoclast's  way  of  emphasizing  the 
contrast  between  Jiis.  perfect  man  and  the  old 
ideal  of  the  saint,  and  it  would  be  unfair  to  take 
these  ebullitions  of  temper  quite  literally.  The 
image  of  the  Superman  is,  in  fact,  left  in  the  hazy 
uncertainty  of  the  future;  the  only  thing  certain 


l82     THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

about  him  is  his  complete  immersion  in  nature, 
and  his  office  to  raise  the  level  of  society  by  rising 
on  the  shoulders  of  those  who  do  the  menial  work 
of  the  world.  At  the  last  analysis  the  Superman 
is  merely  a  negation  of  humanitarian  sympathy 
and  of  the  socialistic  state  of  indistinguished 
equality. 

T^ietzsche's  conception  of  the  Will  to  Power 
may  seem  to  have  brought  us  back  by  a  long  cir- 
cuit to  Hobbes's  definition  of  human  nature  as  "  a 
perpetual  and  restless  desire  of  power  after  power 
that  ceaseth  only  in  death  " ;  but  in  reality  there  is 
a  whole  world  between  the  two.  In  the  levelling 
principles  against  which  Hobbes  directed  his 
theory  of  government  there  was  little  of  that 
notion  of  sympathy  which  is  rooted  in  Locke's 
naturalism  and  has  its  flower  in  German  roman- 
ticism; nor,  on  the  other  hand,  is  there  in  the 
Hobbian  picture  of  the  natural  state  of  mankind 
as  a  warfare  of  self-interests  any  touch  of  that 
morbid  exaltation  of  the  Ego  which  developed 
as  an  inevitable  concomitant  of  romantic  sym- 
pathy. 

At  the  heart  of  Nietzsche's  philosophy  there  is, 
in  fact,  a  colossal  self-deception  which  has  no 
counterpart  in  Hobbism,  and  to  which  we  shall 
find  no  key  unless  we  bear  in  mind  the  long  and 
regular  growth  of  ideas  from  Locke  to  the  present 
day.  Nietzsche  looked  upon  himself  as  at  least 
an  imperfect  type  of  what  the  Superman  was  to 


NIETZSCHE  183 

be,  if  not  the  actual  Superman;  he  thought  of  his 
rebellion  as  an  exemplification  of  the  Will  to 
Power ;  whereas  the  hated  taint  of  decadence  had 
struck  deep  into  his  body  and  mind,  while  his 
years  of  philosophizing  were  one  long  fretful 
disease.  He  has  himself,  with  the  intermittent 
clairvoyance  of  the  morbid  brain,  pointed  to  the 
confusion  of  phenomena  which  has  led  his  follow- 
ers to  admire  his  intellectual  productivity  as 
a  proof  of  fundamental  health.  "History,"  he 
observes,  "discloses  the  terrible  fact  that  the  ex- 
hausted have  always  been  confounded  with  those 
of  the  most  abundant  resources.  .  .  .  How  is  this 
confusion  possible?  When  he  who  was  exhausted 
stood  forth  with  the  bearing  of  a  highly  active  and 
energetic  man  (when  degeneration  implied  a  cer- 
tain excess  of  spiritual  and  nervous  discharge), 
he  was  mistaken  for  the  resourceful  man.  He 
inspired  terror." 

By  a  similar  illusion  Nietzsche  regarded  the 
self-assertive  Superman  as  a  true  reaction  against 
the  prevalent  man  of  sympathy  and  as  a  cure  for 
the  disease  of  the  age.  That  much  of  Nietzsche's 
protest  against  the  excesses  of  humanitarianism 
was  sound  and  well  directed,  I  for  one  am  quite 
ready  to  admit.  He  saw^  as  few  other  men  of  our 
day  have  seen,  the  danger  that  threatens  true 
progress  in  any  system  of  education  and  govern- 
ment which  makes  the  advantage  of  the  ordinary 
rather  than  the  distinguished  man  its  first  object. 


i84    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

He  saw  with  terrible  clearness  that  much  of  our 
rnost  admired  art  is  not  art  at  all  in  the  higher 
sense  of  the  word,  but  an  appeal  to  morbid  senti- 
mentality. There  is  a  humorous  aspect  to  his 
quarrel  with  Wagner,  which  was  at  bottom 
caused  by  the  clashing  of  two  insanely  jealous 
egotisms.  Nevertheless,  there  is  an  element  of 
truth  in  his  condemnation  of  Wagner's  opera  as 
typical  of  certain  degenerative  tendencies  in 
modern  society;  and  many  must  agree  with  him 
in  his  statement  that  Wagner  "found  in  music 
the  means  of  exciting  tired  nerves,  making  it 
thereby  sick."  Not  without  cause  did  Nietzsche 
pronounce  himself  "the  highest  authority  in  the 
world  on  the  question  of  decadence."  But  the 
cure  Nietzsche  proposed  for  these  evils  was  itself 
a  part  of  the  malady.  The  Superman,  in  other 
words,  is  a  product  of  the  same  naturalism  which 
produced  the  disease  it  would  counteract ;  it  is  the 
last  and  most  violent  expression  of  the  egotism, 
or  self-interest,  which  Hume  and  all  his  followers 
balanced  with  sympathy  as  the  two  springs  of 
human  action.  Sympathy,  as  we  saw,  gradually 
usurped  the  place  of  self-interest  as  the  recog- 
nized motive  of  virtue  and  the  source  of  happi- 
ness, but  here  this  strange  thing  will  be  observed : 
where  sympathy  has  been  proclaimed  most 
loudly  in  theory,  self-interest  has  often  been  most 
dominant  in  practice.  Sympathy  first  came  to  ex- 
cess in  the  sentimental  school,  and  the  sentiment- 


NIETZSCHE  185 

alists  were  notorious  for  their  morbid  egotism. 
There  may  be  some  injustice  to  Sterne  in  Byron's 
sneering  remark  that  he  preferred  weeping  over  a 
dead  ass  to  reheving  the  want  of  a  Hving  mother, 
but  in  a  general  way  it  hits  exactly  the  character 
of  which  the  author  of  the  Sentimental  Journey 
was  a  type.  I  came  by  chance  the  other  day  upon 
a  passage  in  an  anonymous  book  of  that  age, 
which  expresses  this  contrast  of  theory  and  prac- 
tice in  the  clearest  terms: 

By  this  system  of  things  [that  is,  the  sentimental 
system]  it  is  that  strict  justice  is  made  to  give  way  to 
transient  fits  of  generosity;  and  a  benevolent  turn  of 
mind  supplants  rigid  integrity.  The  sympathetic  heart, 
not  being  able  to  behold  misery  without  a  starting  tear  of 
compassion,  is  allowed,  by  the  general  suffrage,  to  atone 
for  a  thousand  careless  actions,  which  infallibly  bring 
misery  with  them.  In  commercial  life,  the  rich  oppress 
the  poor,  and  contribute  to  hospitals;  a  monopolizer 
renders  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  destitute  in 
the  course  of  traffic;  but  cheerfully  solicits  or  encourages 
subscriptions  to  alleviate  their  distress.^ 

As  for  Rousseau,  the  great  apostle  of  human- 
ity, Irts  notorious  that  the  principal  trait  of  his 
disposition  was  an  egotism  which  made  it  impos- 
sible for  him  to  live  at  peace  with  his  fellowmen. 
"Benevolence  to  the  whole  species,"  said  Burke, 
having  Rousseau  in  mind,  "and  want  of  feeling 
for  every  individual  with  whom  the  professors 

1  John  Buncle,  Junior,  Gentleman.  2  volumes.   London,  1776,  1778. 
The  hero  is  supposed  to  be  the  son  of  Amory's  John  Buncle. 


i85    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

come  in  contact,  form  the  character  of  the  new 
philosophy."  No  one  who  has  read  the  annals  of 
the  romantic  group  of  Germany  need  be  told  how 
their  pantheistic  philosophy  was  contradicted  by 
/  the  utterly  impractical  individualism  of  their 
lives.  Nor  is  the  same  paradox  absent  from 
the  modern  socialistic  theories  that  have  sprung 
from  romanticism ;  it  would  be  possible,  I  believe, 
in  many  cases  to  establish  from  statistics  a  di- 
rect ratio  between  the  spread  of  humanitarian 
schemes  of  reform  and  the  increase  of  crime  and 
suicide. 

The  truth  is,  this  inconsistency  is  inherent  in 
the  very  principles  of  naturalism.    In  a  world 
made  up  of  passions  and  desires  alone,  the  at- 
tempt to  enter  into  the  personal  emotions  of 
others  will  react  in  an  intensifying  of  our  own 
emotions,  and  the  effort  to  lose  one's  self  in  man- 
kind will  be  balanced  by  a  morbid  craving  for 
I  the  absorption  of   mankind  in  one's  self.    The 
1  harsh  contrast  of  sympathy  and  egotism  is  thus 
1  an  inevitable  consequence  of  naturalism  become 
I  romantic,  nor  is  it  a  mere  chance  that  Tolstoy, 
M  with  his  exaltation  of  Rousseauism  and  of  ab- 
solute non-resistance  and  universal  brotherhood, 
should  have  been  the  contemporary  of  a  philos- 
opher who  made  Napoleon  his  ideal  and  preached 
war  and  the  Superman  as  the  healthy  condi- 
tion of  society.   Nietzsche  himself,  in  one  of  his 
moments  of  insight,  recognizes  this  coexistence 


NIETZSCHE  187 

of  extremes  as  a  sign  of  decadence.  That  they 
spring  from  the  same  source  is  shown  by  the  un- 
expected resemblance  they  often  display  beneath 
their  superficial  opposition.  Perhaps  the  book 
that  comes  closest  to  Zarathustra  in  its  funda- 
mental tone  is  just  the  Leaves  of  Grass,  which  in 
its  avowed  philosophy  of  life  would  seem  to 
stand  at  the  remotest  distance.  Nietzsche  de- 
nounces all  levelling  processes  and  proclaims  a 
society  based  frankly  on  differences  of  power; 
Walt  Whitman,  on  the  contrary,  denies  all  differ- 
ences whatsoever  and  glorifies  an  absolute  equal- 
ity :  yet  as  both  start  from  the  pure  flux  of  nat- 
uralism, so  they  both  pass  through  a  denial  of 
the  distinction  of  good  and  evil  based  on  the 
old  ideals,  and  end  in  an  egotism  which  brings 
aPrstocrat  and  democrat  together  in  a  strange  and 
unwilling  brotherhood. 

To  any  one  caught  in  this  net,  life  must  be  a 
onesided  fanaticism  or  a  condition  of  vacillating  ^ 
unrest.  The  great  tragedy  of  Nietzsche's  ex- 
istence was  due  to  the  fact  that,  while  he  per- 
ceived the  danger  into  which  he  had  fallen,  yet 
his  struggles  to  escape  only  entangled  him  more 
desperately  in  the  fatal  mesh.  His  boasted  trans- 
valuation  of  all  values  was  in  reality  a  complete 
devaluation,  if  I  may  coin  the  word,  leaving  him 
more  deeply  immersed  in  the  nihilism  which  he 
exposed  as  the  prime  evil  of  modern  civilization. 
With   Hume  and   the  romantic  naturalists  he 


i88    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

■fViA"- threw  away  both  the  reason  and  the  intuition 
into  any  superrational  law  beyond  the  stream  of 
desires  and  passions  and  impulses.  He  looked 
iritb  his  own  heart  and  into  the  world  of  phenom- 
ena, and  beheld  there  a  ceaseless  ebb  and  flow, 
without  beginning,  without  end,  and  without 
meaning.  The  only  law  that  he  could  discover, 
the  only  rest  for  the  mind,  was  some  dimly  fore- 
seen return  of  all  things  back  into  their  primor- 
dial state,  to  start  afresh  on  the  same  dark  course 
of  chance  —  the  Eternal  Recurrence,  he  called  it. 
"No  doubt,"  he  once  wrote,  "there  is  a  far-off, 
invisible,  and  prodigious  cycle  which  gives  a  com- 
mon law  to  our  little  divagations:  let  us  uplift 
ourselves  to  this  thought!  But  our  life  is  too 
short,  our  vision  too  feeble ;  we  must  content  our- 
selves with  this  sublime  possibility."  At  times 
he  sets  up  the  ability  to  look  undismayed  into 
this  ever-turning  wheel  as  the  test  that  distin- 
guishes the  Superman  from  the  herd.  And  this 
is  all  Nietzsche  could  give  to  mankind  by  his 
Will  to  Power  and  his  Transvaluation  of  Values : 
the  will  to  endure  the  vision  of  endless,  purpose- 
less mutation;  the  courage  to  stand  without 
shame,  naked  in  a  world  of  chance ;  the  strength 
I  to  accomplish  —  absolutely  nothing.  At  times 
Tie  proclaims  his  creed  with  an  effrontery  of  joy 
over  those  who  sink  by  the  way  and  cry  out  for 
help.  Other  times  pity  for  so  hapless  a  human- 
ity wells  up  in  his  heart  despite  himself;  and 


r 


NIETZSCHE  189 

more  than  once  he  admits  that  the  last  tempta- 
tion of  the  Superman  is  sympathy  for  a  race  re- 
volving blindly  in  this  cycle  of  change  —  "Where 
lie  thy  greatest  dangers?  In  compassion."  As 
for  himself,  what  he  found  in  his  philosophy, 
what  followed  him  in  the  end  into  the  dark  de- 
scents of  madness,  is  told  in  the  haunting  vision 
of  The  Shadow  in  the  last  section  of  Zarathu- 
stra : 

"Have  I  —  yet  a  goal  ?  A  haven  towards  which  my 
sail  is  set  ? 

"A  good  wind  ?  Alas,  he  only  who  knoweth  whither 
he  saileth,  knoweth  also  what  wind  is  good  and  a  fair 
wind  for  him. 

"What  still  remaineth  to  me  ?  A  heart  weary  and 
flippant;  a  wandering  will;  fluttering  wings;  a  broken 
spine. 

"This  seeking  for  my  home:  ah,  Zarathustra,  knowest 
thou  well,  this  seeking  hath  been  my  home-sickening;  it 
devoureth  me. 

"Where  is  —  my  home  ?  For  it  I  ask  and  seek  and 
have  sought,  but  have  not  found  it.  Oh  eternal  every- 
where, oh  eternal  nowhere,  oh  eternal  —  in-vain!" 

Thus  spake  the  Shadow,  and  Zarathustra's  counten- 
ance grew  longer  at  his  words.  "Thou  art  my  Shadow!" 
said  he  at  last,  with  sadness. 

The  end  of  it  all  is  the  clamour  of  romantic 
egotism  turned  into  horror  at  its  own  vacuity 
and  of  romantic  sympathy  turned  into  despair. 
It  is  naturalism  at  war  with  itself  and  struggling 
to  escape  from  its  own  fatality.  As  I  leave  Nietz- 
sche I  think  of  the  ancient  tragedy  in  which  Hera- 


igo    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

cles  is  represented  as  writhing  in  the  embrace  of 
the  Nessus-shirt  he  has  himself  put  on,  and  rend- 
ing his  own  flesh  in  a  vain  effort  to  escape  its 
poisonous  web. 


HUXLEY 


HUXLEY 

In  a  world  that  is  governed  by  phrases  we  can- 
not too  often  recur  to  the  famiHar  saying  of 
Hobbes,  that  "words  are  wise  men's  counters, 
they  do  but  reckon  by  them ;  but  they  are  the 
money  of  fools";  and  so  to-day,  when  the  real 
achievements  of  science  have  thrown  a  kind  of 
halo  about  the  word  and  made  it  in  the  general 
mind  synonymous  with  truth,  the  first  duty  of 
any  one  who  would  think  honestly  is  to  reach  a 
clear  definition  of  what  he  means  when  he  utters 
the  sanctified  syllables.  In  this  particular  case 
the  duty  and  difficulty  are  the  greater  because 
the  word  conveys  three  quite  different  meanings 
which  have  correspondingly  different  values, 
l^sitive  science  is  one  thing,  but  hypothetical 
science  is  another  thing,  and  philosophical  sci- 
ence ij^till  another;  yet  on  the  popular  tongue, 
nay,  even  in  the  writings  of  those  who  pretend 
to  extreme  precision,  these  distinctions  are  often 
forgotten,  to  the  utter  confusion  of  ideas. 

By  positive  science  I  mean  the  observation 
and  classification  of  facts  and  the  discovery  of 
those  constant  sequences  in  phenomena  which 
can  be  expressed  in  mathematical  formulae  or  in 
the  generalized  language  of  law;  I  mean  that 
procedure  which  Huxley  had  in  mind  when  he 


194    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

said  that  science  is  "nothing  but  trained  and 
organized  common  sense,  differing  from  the  lat- 
ter only  as  a  veteran  may  differ  from  a  raw  re- 
cruit: and  its  methods  differ  from  those  of  com- 
mon sense  only  so  far  as  the  guardsman's  cut  and 
thrust  differ  from  the  manner  in  which  a  savage 
wields  his  club."  Now  for  such  a  procedure  no 
one  can  feel  anything  but  the  highest  respect 
—  respect  which  in  the  lay  mind  may  well 
mount  to  admiration  and  even  to  awe.  He  has 
but  a  poor  imagination  who  cannot  be  stirred  to 
wonder  before  the  triumphs  over  material  forces 
gained  by  methods  of  which  he  can  confess  only 
humble  ignorance;  and  beyond  these  visible 
achievements  lies  a  whole  region  of  intellectual 
activity  open  to  the  man  of  science,  but  closed 
and  forever  foreign  to  the  investigator  in  other 
kinds  of  ideas.  I  am  bound  to  insist  on  the  fact 
that  I  have  no  foolish  desire  to  belittle  the  hon- 
ours of  science  in  its  practical  applications,  and 
that  I  can  in  a  way  estimate  its  rewards  as  an 
abstract  study,  however  far  the  full  fruition  of 
the  scientific  life  may  lie  beyond  my  reach. 

Positive  science,  thus  defined  as  that  trained 
observation  which  brings  the  vision  of  order  out 
of  disorder,  system  out  of  chaos,  law  out  of 
chance,  might  seem  splendid  enough  in  theory 
and  useful  enough  in  practice  to  satisfy  the  most 
exorbitant  ambition.  But  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  a  law  of  science,  however  wide  its 


HUXLEY  195 

scope,  does  not  go  beyond  a  statement  of  the  re- 
latlon'of  observed  facts  and  tells  us  not  a  word  of 
what  lies  behind  this  relationship  or  of  the  cause 
of  these  facts.  Now  the  mind  of  man  is  so  con- 
stituted that  this  ignorance  of  causes  is  to  it  a 
constant  source  of  irritation;  we  are  almost  re- 
sistlessly  tempted  to  pass  beyond  the  mere  state- 
ment of  law  to  erecting  a  theory  of  the  reality 
that  underlies  the  law.  Such  a  theory  is  an  hy- 
pothesis, and  such  activity  of  the  mind  is  hypo- 
thetical science  as  distinguished  from  positive 
science.  But  we  must  distinguish  further.  The 
word  hypothesis  is  used,  by  the  man  of  science 
as  well  as  by  the  layman,  in  two  quite  different 
senses.  On  the  one  hand,  it  may  mean  the  at- 
tempt to  express  in  language  borrowed  from  our 
sensuous  experience  the  nature  of  a  cause  or 
reality  which  transcends  such  experience.  Thus 
the  luminiferous  ether  is  properly  an  hypothesis : 
by  its  very  definition  it  transcends  the  reach  of 
our  perceptive  faculties;  we  cannot  see  it,  or  feel 
it  in  any  way ;  yet  it  is,  or  was,  assumed  to  exist  as 
the  cause  of  known  phenomena  and  its  properties 
were  given  in  terms  of  density,  elasticity,  etc., 
which  are  appropriate  to  material  things  which 
we  can  see  and  feel.  On  the  other  hand,  the  word 
hypothesis  is  often  taken  to  signify  merely  a 
scientific  law  which  belongs  to  the  realm  of  posi- 
tive science,  but  which  is  still  to  be  established. 
Confusion  would  be  avoided  if  we  employed  the 


ige    THE   DRIFT   OF  ROMANTICISM 

term  scientific  conjecture  for  this  second,  and 
proper,  procedure,  and  confined  the  use  of  the 
term  hypothesis  to  the  former,  and  as  I  think  im- 
proper, procedure.  To  make  clear  these  distinc- 
tions let  me  give  an  illustration  or  two.  The  for- 
mula of  gravitation  merely  states  the  regularity 
of  a  certain  group  of  known  phenomena  from  the 
motion  of  a  falling  apple  to  the  motion  of  the 
planets  about  the  sun.  When  this  formula  first 
dawned  on  the  mind  of  Newton,  it  was  a  scien- 
tific conjecture;  when  it  was  tested  and  proved 
to  conform  to  facts,  it  became  an  accepted  scien- 
tific law.  Both  conjecture  and  accepted  law  are 
strictly  within  the  field  of  positive  science.  But 
if  Newton,  not  content  with  generalizing  the 
phenomena  of  gravitation  in  the  form  of  a  law, 
had  undertaken  to  theorize  on  the  absolute  nature 
of  the  attraction  which  caused  the  phenomena 
of  gravitation,^  he  would  have  passed  from  the 
sphere  of  positive  science  to  that  of  hypothet- 
ical science.  So  when  Darwin,  by  systematiz- 
ing the  vast  body  of  observations  in  biology  and 
geology,  showed  that  plants  and  animals  develop 
in  time  and  with  the  changes  of  the  earth  from 
the  simplest  forms  of  animate  existence  to  the 
most  complex  forms  now  seen,  and  thus  gave 
precision  to  the  law  of  evolution,  he  was  working 
in  the  field  of  positive  science :  he  changed  what 
had  been  a  conjectured   law  to  a  generally  ac- 

•  On  this  point  compare  Berkeley,  Siris,  §§  245-250. 


HUXLEY  197 

cepted  law.  But  when  he  went  a  step  further 
and  undertook  to  explain  the  cause  of  this  evo- 
lution by  the  theory  of  natural  selection  or  the 
survival  of  the  fit,  he  passed  from  positive  to 
hypothetical  science. 

In  my  essay  on  Newman  I  found  it  convenient 
to  classify  the  minds  of  men  figuratively  in  an 
inner  and  an  outer  group.  In  the  outer  group 
I  placed  the  two  extremes  of  the  mystic  and  the 
sceptic,  and  in  the  inner  group  the  non-mystical 
religious  mind  and  the  non-sceptical  scientific 
mind.  These  two  classes  of  the  inner  group  differ 
in  their  field  of  interest,  the  one  being  concerned 
with  the  observation  of  spiritual  states,  the  other 
with  the  observation  of  material  phenomena; 
but  they  agree  in  so  far  as  the  former  passes 
from  the  facts  of  his  spiritual  consciousness  to  the 
belief  in  certain  causes  conceived  as  mytholog- 
ical beings  and  known  by  revelation,  while  the 
latter  passes  from  the  facts  of  his  material  obser- 
vations to  the  belief  in  certain  causes  conceived 
as  hypotheses  and  known  by  inference.  Hypo- 
theses, in  other  words,  are  merely  the  mythology, 
tlne~^eus  ex  machina,  of  science,  and  they  are 
eradicated  from  the  scientific  mind  only  by  the 
severest  discipline  of  scepticism,  just  as  mytho- 
logy is  eradicated  from  the  religious  mind  by  gen- 
uine mysticism.  I  am  aware  of  the  danger  of  in- 
culcating such  an  eradication.  As  for  most  men 
to  take  away  the  belief  in  their  gods  as  known 


igS    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

realities  would  be  to  put  an  end  to  their  religion, 
so,  it  may  be  objected,  to  take  away  these  hy- 
potheses would  be  to  endanger  the  very  founda- 
tions of  science.  Yet,  even  if  scientific  hypo- 
theses, in  consideration  of  human  frailty,  may 
have  their  use  just  as  mythologies  have  their 
use,  I  still  protest  that  they  are  not  necessary 
to  scientific  discovery,  as  is  proved  by  the  great 
example  of  Newton.  I  believe,  though  my  tem- 
erity may  only  be  equalled  by  my  ignorance,  that 
they  have  oftener  introduced  confusion  into  pure 
science  than  they  have  aided  in  the  discovery 
of  new  laws  or  in  the  broadening  of  known  laws ; 
and  I  am  confirmed  in  this  belief  by  the  present 
state  of  biology.  Darwin's  law  of  evolution  has 
remained  virtually  unshaken  and  has,  I  suppose, 
been  the  instigation  of  innumerable  discoveries; 
but,  so  far  as  I  may  judge  from  my  limited  read- 
ing in  the  subject,  Darwin's  hypothesis  of  nat- 
ural selection  and  the  survival  of  the  fit  has  on 
the  one  hand  been  seriously  and  widely  ques- 
tioned as  a  cause  sufficient  to  account  for  evolu- 
tion, and  on  the  other  hand  has  led  to  specula- 
tion to  find  a  substitute  for  it  which  in  wildness 
of  theorizing  and  in  audacity  of  credulousness 
can  only  be  likened  to  the  intricacies  of  religious 
scholasticism. 

The  condemnation  of  hypothetical  science  as 
dangerous  to  integrity  of  mind  is  no  new  thing. 
Even  in  the  seventeenth   century  Joseph  Glan- 


HUXLEY  199 

vill  saw  how  surely  the  enthusiasm  engendered 
by  the  foundation  of  the  Royal  Society  would 
lead  to  vain  hypotheses.  In  his  Scepsis  Scien- 
tifica  he  sets  forth  their  nature  and  forestalls 
Hume's  destructive  analysis  of  our  notion  of 
causality,  with  strong  warning  that  the  man  of 
science  should  not  "build  the  Castle  of  his  intel- 
lectual security,  in  the  Air  of  Opinions.  .  .  .  Opin- 
ions [he  adds,  meaning  hypotheses]  are  the  Rat- 
tles of  immature  intellects.  .  .  .  Dogmatizing  is  the 
great  disturber  both  of  our  selves  and  the  world 
without  us."  In  the  next  age  Bolingbroke,  in  his 
Essays  Addressed  to  Mr.  Pope,  argued  the  question 
of  the  limits  of  human  knowledge  and  the  fallacies 
of  hypothetical  theorizing  with  a  clearness  and 
penetration  which  would  have  made  that  work 
one  of  the  bulwarks  of  English  philosophy,  were 
it  not  for  my  Lord's  disdain  of  the  rules  of  com- 
position and  the  tediousness  of  his  endless  repe- 
titions, and  were  it  not  above  all  for  his  own 
inconsistency  in  urging  the  most  colossal  of  all 
hypotheses,  that  of  universal  optimism.  In  parti- 
cular he  takes  up,  more  than  once,  the  common 
plea  that  hypotheses  are  useful,  whether  true  or 
not. 

It  will  be  urged,  perhaps,  as  decisive  in  favor  of 
hypotheses  [he  observes],  that  they  may  be  of  serv^ice, 
and  can  be  of  no  disservice  to  us,  in  our  pursuit  of  know- 
ledge. An  hypothesis  founded  on  mere  arbitrary  assump- 
tions will  be  a  true  hypothesis,  and  therefore  of  service 


20O    THE  DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

to  philosophy,  if  it  is  confirmed  by  many  observations 
afterwards,  and  if  no  one  phaenomenon  stand  in  oppo- 
sition to  it.  An  hypothesis  that  appears  inconsistent 
with  the  phaenomena  will  be  soon  demonstrated  false,  and 
as  soon  rejected. 

In  reply  he  shows  by  example  how  hypotheses 
have  kept  men  from  the  right  path  of  investiga- 
tion and  how  they  have  been  maintained  (what 
rich  and  even  ridiculous  examples  he  might  have 
produced  from  our  age)  after  they  have  been 
proved  inconsistent  with  facts  and  common 
sense.  "The  fautors  of  hypotheses  would  have 
us  believe  that  even  the  detection  of  their  false- 
hood gives  occasion  to  our  improvement  in 
knowledge.  But  the  road  to  truth  does  not  lie 
through  the  precincts  of  error."  Now,  it  is  true 
that  neither  Glanvill  nor  Bolingbroke  distin- 
guished between  the  legitimate  use  of  scientific 
conjecture  and  the  illegitimate  use  of  hypotheses, 
but  they  had  chiefly  in  mind,  I  think,  not  the 
mere  formulation  of  law  but  the  attempt  to 
penetrate  into  ultimate  causes. 

The  chief  fault  of  hypotheses,  however,  lies  not 
in  the  entanglement  of  pure  science  among  peril- 
ous ways  and  in  the  lifting  up  of  the  scientific  im- 
agination to  idolatrous  worship,  as  it  were,  of  the 
chimcBra  homhinans  in  vacuo,  but  in  the  almost 
irresistible  tendency  of  the  human  mind  to  glide 
from  hypothetical  science  into  what  I  have  called 
philosophical  science,  meaning  thereby  the  en- 


HUXLEY  201 

deavour  to  formulate  a  philosophy  of  life  out  of 
scientific  law  and  hypothesis.  An  hypothesis  may 
be  proclaimed  by  the  man  of  science  as  a  purely 
subjective  formula  for  a  group  of  phenomena, 
and  as  a  confessedly  temporary  expedient  for  ad- 
vancing a  little  further  in  the  process  of  bringing 
our  observations  under  the  regularity  of  law;  the 
man  of  science  may  pretend  verbally  to  a  purely 
sceptical  attitude  towards  his  transcendental 
definitions,  but  in  practice  this  scepticism  almost 
invariably  gives  way  to  a  feeling  that  the  formula 
for  causes  is  as  real  objectively  as  the  law  of  phe- 
nomena which  it  undertakes  to  explain,  and  to 
a  kind  of  supercilious  intolerance  for  those  who 
maintain  the  sceptical  attitude  practically  as  well 
as  verbally,  or  for  those  who  build  their  faith  on 
hypotheses  of  another  sort  than  his  own.  Hence 
the  hostility  that  has  constantly  existed  between 
those  who  base  their  philosophy  of  life  on  intui- 
tion and  the  humanities  and  those  who  base  it 
upon  scientific  law  and  hypothesis.  At  the  very 
beginning  of  the  modern  scientific  movement 
this  antagonism  made  itself  felt,  and,  as  religion 
had  then  the  stronger  position  in  society,  took 
the  form  of  apologetics  on  the  part  of  science. 
In  what  may  be  called  the  authorized  History 
of  the  Royal  Society,  Bishop  Sprat  undertook 
to  allay  the  suspicions  that  had  immediately 
arisen  against  the  chartered  organization  of  ex- 
perimental science.   With  specious  sophistry  he 


202     THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

argued  that  the  "new  philosophy"  would  never 
encroach  on  the  established  system  of  education 
in  the  humanities.  He  admitted  the  natural  alli- 
ance between  science  and  industry  against  the 
feudal  form  of  government,  but  asserted  that 
science  in  this  was  only  a  handmaid  of  the  times. 

Nor  ought  our  Gentry  [he  declares]  to  be  averse  from 
the  promoting  of  Trade,  out  of  any  little  Jealousy,  that 
thereby  they  shall  debase  themselves,  and  corrupt  their 
Blood :  For  they  are  to  know,  that  Trafic  and  Commerce 
have  given  Mankind  a  higher  Degree  than  any  Title  of 
Nobility,  even  that  of  Civility  and  Humanity  itself.  And 
at  this  time  especially  above  all  others,  they  have  no 
reason  to  despise  Trade  as  below  them,  when  it  has  so 
great  an  influence  on  the  very  Government  of  the  World. 
In  former  Ages  indeed  this  was  not  so  remarkable. 

Primarily,  however,  Sprat,  as  a  prelate  in  good 
standing,  contended  that  religion  stood  in  no 
danger  from  the  deductions  of  the  new  phil- 
osophy : 

I  do  here,  in  the  beginning,  most  sincerely  declare, 
that  if  this  Design  [of  the  Royal  Society]  should  in  the 
least  diminish  the  Reverence,  that  is  due  to  the  Doctrine 
of  Jesus  Christ,  it  were  so  far  from  deserving  Protection, 
that  it  ought  to  be  abhorr'd  by  all  the  Politic  and  Pru- 
dent ;  as  well  as  by  the  devout  Part  of  Christendom.  .  .  . 
With  these  Apprehensions  I  come  to  examine  the  Objec- 
tions, which  I  am  now  to  satisfy:  and  having  calmly 
compar'd  the  Arguments  of  some  devout  Men  against 
Knowledge,  and  chiefly  that  of  Experiments  ;  I  must  pro- 
nounce them  both,  to  be  altogether  inoffensive.  I  did 
before  affirm,  that  the  Royal  Society  is  abundantly  cau- 


HUXLEY  203 

tious,  not  to  intermeddle  in  Spiritual  Things.  ...  So 
true  is  that  Saying  of  my  Lord  Bacon,  That  by  a  little 
Knowledge  of  Nature  Men  become  Atheists;  but  a  great  deal 
returns  them  back  again  to  a  sound  and  religious  Mind.  In 
brief,  if  we  rightly  apprehend  the  Matter,  it  will  be 
found  that  it  is  not  only  Sottishness,  but  Prophaness, 
for  Men  to  cry  out  against  the  understanding  of  Nature; 
for  that  being  nothing  else  but  the  Instrument  of  God, 
whereby  he  gives  Being  and  Action  to  Things:  the 
Knowledge  of  it  deserves  so  little  to  be  esteem'd  impious, 
that  it  ought  rather  to  be  reckon 'd  as  Divine. 

It  may  seem  a  little  illogical  in  the  good  Bishop 
first  to  apologize  for  science  as  having  no  finger  in 
Spiritual  Things  and  then  to  exalt  it  as  a  bulwark 
against  atheism,  but  such  an  inconsistency  is 
very  human,  and  it  is  an  example  j)f  the  almost 
irresistible  tendency  of  the  mind  to  use  its  own 
specific  form  of  knowledge  as  a  criterion  of  all 
knowledge.  The  vacillation  between  apology  and 
presumption  introduced  by  the  historian  of  the 
Royal  Society  has  persisted  to  this  day,  and  in 
essay  after  essay  of  Huxley's  you  will  find  the 
modern  president  of  the  Society  maintaining  on 
one  page  the  self-limitations  of  positive  science 
and  on  another  page  passing  from  hypothesis  to 
a  dogmatic  philosophy,  here  rebuking  those  who 
confound  the  domains  of  scientific  and  spiritual 
law  and  there  proclaiming  science  as  a  support 
of  what  he  deems  true  religion.  Much  that  he 
wrote  was  directed  to  temporary  questions,  and 
to  open  his  volumes    may  seem  even  now  to 


204    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

breathe  the  dust  of  battles  fought  long  ago  and 
rendered  meaningless  by  the  advance  of  time; 
but  in  reality,  though  their  outer  form  may 
change,  the  disputes  in  which  he  engaged  have 
not  yet  been  settled  as  he  so  fondly  believed 
they  were,  and  can  never  be  settled  unless  a 
sullen  apathy  be  taken  for  assent. 

Certainly  Huxley,  looking  back  from  his  quiet 
retirement  at  Eastbourne  over  his  long  and  bel- 
ligerent career,  might  be  justified  in  thinking  that 
victory  was  altogether  the  reward  of  his  laborious 
life.  He  had  had  no  other  regular  instruction 
than  what  he  received  for  a  couple  of  years  in  the 
semi-public  school  at  Ealing  of  which  his  father 
was  assistant  master,  and  what  he  gained  from 
lectures  in  Sydenham  College,  London,  and  at 
Charing  Cross  Hospital.  In  1846,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-one,  he  was  appointed  surgeon  to  H.M.S. 
Rattlesnake  which  was  bound  for  a  long  surveying 
cruise  in  the  Torres  Straits.  After  four  years  in 
the  Far  East  he  returned  to  England,  with  a  large 
experience  in  zoological  and  ethnological  work, 
and  with  no  immediate  prospects  of  advance- 
ment. His  first  experience  in  London  was  embit- 
tered by  governmental  delays  and  neglect,  but  in 
1 85 1  he  was  elected  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Soci- 
ety, receiving  the  Gold  Medal  the  next  year,  and 
in  1854  he  was  appointed  professor  of  natural 
history  at  the  School  of  Mines.  After  that  hon- 
ours and  offers  came  to  him  in  rapid  succession. 


HUXLEY  205 

He  could  not  be  tempted  to  leave  London,  where 
he  felt  himself  at  the  centre  of  things,  but  in  1872 
he  accepted  the  position  of  Lord  Rector  of  Aber- 
deen University,  since  this  office  afforded  him  an 
opportunity  of  exerting  an  influence  on  national 
education  without  giving  up  his  residence  in  the 
capital.  In  1883  he  was  chosen  president  of  the 
Royal  Society,  and  in  1892,  in  lieu  of  a  title  which 
he  would  not  accept,  he  was  raised  to  the  Privy 
Council.  It  is  not  insignificant  of  his  position  in 
England  that,  on  the  occasion  of  kissing  hands 
with  the  other  Councillors  at  Osborne,  when  he 
snatched  an  opportunity  for  obtaining  a  close 
view  of  the  Queen,  he  found  Her  Majesty's  eyes 
fixed  upon  himself  with  the  same  inquisitiveness. 
But  the  most  sensible  triumphs  were  no  doubt 
those  that  came  to  him  in  public  as  the  recognized 
spokesman  of  the  new  philosophy,  and  of  these, 
two  of  a  personal  sort,  gained  at  Oxford,  the  very 
citadel  of  the  forces  leagued  against  him,  must 
have  been  peculiarly  sweet.  Every  one  knows  of 
his  famous  tilt  with  Wilberforce  at  the  meeting 
of  the  British  Association  at  Oxford  in  i860.  It 
was  just  after  the  publication  of  The  Origin  oj 
Species,  and  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  thought  it  a 
proper  occasion  to  demolish  the  rising  heresy 
with  argument  and  ridicule.  The  lecture-room 
was  crowded,  the  clergy  being  massed  in  the  cen- 
tre of  the  audience,  and  the  very  windows  being 
packed  with  ladies  who  encouraged  the  champion 


2o6    THE  DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

of  religion  with  their  fluttering  handkerchiefs. 
The  Bishop  spoke  for  an  hour,  assuring  his  hear- 
ers that  there  was  nothing  in  the  idea  of  evolution, 
and  then,  turning  "with  a  smiling  insolence"  to 
Huxley  who  was  sitting  on  the  platform,  "begged 
to  know,  was  it  through  his  grandfather  or  his 
grandmother  that  he  claimed  his  descent  from  a 
monkey."  At  this  Huxley  is  said  to  have  struck 
his  hand  upon  his  knee,  and  to  have  exclaimed  to 
his  neighbour,  "The  Lord  hath  delivered  him 
into  mine  hands."  Then,  as  the  event  was  de- 
scribed in  Macmillan's  Magazine,  he  "slowly  and 
deliberately  arose.  A  slight,  tall  figure,  stern  and 
pale,  very  quiet  and  very  grave,  he  stood  before 
us  and  spoke  those  tremendous  words  —  words 
which  no  one  seems  sure  of  now,  nor,  I  think, 
could  remember  just  after  they  were  spoken,  for 
their  meaning  took  away  our  breath,  though  it 
left  us  in  no  doubt  as  to  what  it  was."  According 
to  Huxley's  son  and  biographer  the  most  accur- 
ate report  of  the  concluding  words  is  in  a  letter 
of  John  Richard  Green: 

I  asserted  —  and  I  repeat  —  that  a  man  has  no  rea- 
son to  be  ashamed  of  having  an  ape  for  his  grandfather. 
If  there  were  an  ancestor  whom  I  should  feel  shame  in 
recalling  it  would  rather  be  a  man  —  a  man  of  restless 
and  versatile  intellect  —  who,  not  content  with  an 
equivocal  success  in  his  own  sphere  of  activity,  plunges 
into  scientific  questions  with  which  he  has  no  real 
acquaintance,  only  to  obscure  them  by  an  aimless  rhet- 
oric, and  distract  the  attention  of  his  hearers  from  the 


HUXLEY  207 

real  point  at  issue  by  eloquent  digressions  and  skilled 
appeals  to  religious  prejudice. 

Again,  at  another  meeting  of  the  British  Asso- 
ciation at  Oxford,  in  1894,  Huxley  appeared  as  a 
champion  of  Darwinism  against  the  insinuations 
of  Lord  Salisbury,  who,  in  his  speech  as  president, 
spoke  with  delicate  irony  "of  the  '  comforting 
word,  evolution,'  and,  passing  to  the  Weisman- 
nian  controversy,  implied  that  the  diametrically 
opposed  views  so  frequently  expressed  nowadays 
threw  the  whole  process  of  evolution  into 
doubt."  ^  But  things  were  not  what  they  had 
been.  The  ready  and  vociferous  applause  was  for 
the  prophet  of  Darwinism,  and  Huxley,  instead 
of  repelling  sarcasm  with  invective,  now  con- 
scious of  his  triumphant  position  and  of  the  cour- 
tesy due  to  one  who  as  Prime  Minister  had  only 
two  years  before  honoured  him  with  the  Privy 
Councillorship,  was  compelled  to  veil  "an  unmis- 
takable and  vigorous  protest  in  the  most  gracious 
and  dignified  speech  of  thanks."  It  was  his  last 
public  appearance  on  any  important  occasion,  a 
proper  and  almost  majestic  conclusion  to  his  long 
warfare.  He  died  on  June  29  of  the  following  year, 
having  just  completed  his  threescore  and  ten. 
By  his  direction  three  lines  from  a  poem  by  his 
wife  were  inscribed  on  his  tomb-stone : 


'  Professor  H.  F.  Osbom  in  Transactions  of  the  N.  Y.  Acad.  Sci., 
vol.  XV. 


2o8    THE    DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

Be  not  afraid,  ye  waiting  hearts  that  weep; 
For  still  He  giveth  His  beloved  sleep, 
And  if  an  endless  sleep  He  wills,  so  best. 

Better,  if  he  could  have  known  them,  would  have 
been  the  words  spoken  only  the  other  day  by  the 
Vice-Chancellor  of  Cambridge  at  the  great  dinner 
given  at  the  university  on  the  occasion  of  Dar- 
win's centenary : 

I  claim  as  a  theologian  —  and  I  see  representatives  of 
law,  music,  and  letters,  and  many  other  sciences  and  arts 
present  —  that  only  one  spirit  animates  us  all,  and  I 
should  beg  that  we  might  be  included  in  the  term 
"naturalists." 

Now  to  Huxley  more  than  to  any  other  one  man 
in  England  is  due  this  victory,  seeming  to  some 
so  complete  and  final ;  he  more  than  any  other  one 
man  stood  in  the  nineteenth  century  for  the  triple 
power  of  positive  and  hypothetical  science  and  of 
philosophical  science  in  the  form  of  naturalism. 
Of  his  work  in  positive  science  I  am  incompetent 
to  speak,  but  I  can  at  least  say  that  it  was  im- 
portant enough  to  give  him  honourable  standing 
among  investigators  and  to  clothe  his  popular 
utterances  with  authority.  His  great  opportun- 
ity came  with  the  publication  of  The  Origin  of 
Species  when  he  was  thirty-four  years  old,  and  for 
the  remaining  thirty-six  years  of  his  life  he  was 
the  valiant  and  aggressive  champion  of  evolution 
and  the  Darwinian  hypothesis  against  all  comers, 
whether  they  were  mighty  men  of  the  Church  or 


HUXLEY  209 

of  Parliament.  He  was,  so  to  speak,  the  Plato  to 
the  Socrates  of  the  new  philosophy,  applying  its 
premisses  to  every  department  of  life.  His  power 
in  this  field  was  conditioned  by  his  knowledge  of 
science  and  of  philosophy,  but  it  depended  also 
on  his  consummate  skill  in  the  use  of  language. 
To  read  his  essays,  which  deal  so  magnificently 
with  old  disputes  and  forgotten  animosities,  is  to 
feel  —  at  least  a  literary  man  may  be  pardoned 
for  so  feeling  —  that  here  is  one  of  the  cunning 
artificers  lost  to  letters,  an  essayist  who,  if  he  had 
devoted  his  faculties  to  the  more  permanent 
aspect  of  truth,  might  have  taken  a  place  among 
the  great  masters  of  literature.  Certainly  in  sar- 
casm and  irony  he  had  no  superior,  unless  it 
was  Matthew  Arnold,  whom,  indeed,  he  in 
many  superficial  respects  resembles.  He  had, 
no  doubt,  easy  material  in  the  bishops,  and  the 
epithet  episcopophagous,  which  he  pleasantly 
coined  for  himself,  tells  the  story  of  that  contest 
in  a  word.  Better  material  yet  was  afforded  by 
Gladstone  when,  rushing  in  where  bishops  feared 
to  tread,  he  undertook  to  uphold  the  cosmogony 
of  Genesis  as  scientifically  correct.  Whatever 
one's  attitude  towards  philosophical  science  may 
be,  one  can  acknowledge  a  feeling  of  unreserved 
glee  in  seeing  that  flabby,  pretentious  intellect 
pricked  and  slashed  in  such  masterly  fashion. 
Satire  like  the  following  is  never  old: 

In    particular,    the    remarkable   disquisition   which 


210    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

covers  pages  ii  to  14  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  last  contribu- 
tion [to  the  Nineteenth  Century,  January,  1886]  has 
greatly  exercised  my  mind.  Socrates  is  reported  to  have 
said  of  the  works  of  Heraclitus  that  he  who  attempted  to 
comprehend  them  should  be  a  "  Delian  swimmer,"  but 
that,  for  his  part,  what  he  could  understand  was  so  good 
that  he  was  disposed  to  believe  in  the  excellence  of  that 
which  he  found  unintelligible.  In  endeavouring  to  make 
myself  master  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  meaning  in  these 
pages,  I  have  often  been  overcome  by  a  feeling  analog- 
ous to  that  of  Socrates,  but  not  quite  the  same.  That 
which  I  do  understand  has  appeared  to  me  so  very  much 
the  reverse  of  good,  that  I  have  sometimes  permitted 
myself  to  doubt  the  value  of  that  which  I  do  not  under- 
stand. 

That  is  the  true  joy  of  battle,  that  keeps  the 
wrangling  of  ancient  days  forever  young: 

Full  of  the  god  that  urged  their  burning  breast, 
The  heroes  thus  their  mutual  warmth  express'd. 

In  the  case  of  Huxley  himself  there  is  no  ques- 
tion of  what  we  understand  and  what  we  do  not 
understand.  All  in  his  writing  is  of  that  pecu- 
liarly lucid  quality  which  is  an  argument  in  itself, 
for  we  are  prone  to  accept  the  canon  that  what  is 
clear  must  be  true.  Yet  there  is  a  distinction. 
Though,  so  far  as  regards  the  end  immediately  in 
view,  Huxley  is  always  a  master  of  logical  pre- 
cision, one  discovers,  in  reading  him  largely,  that 
his  ends  are  not  always  the  same,  and  that  in  the 
total  effect  of  his  works  there  lies  concealed  an 
insoluble  ambiguity.   So  it  is  that,  though  in  one 


HUXLEY  211 

sense  his  strongest  intellectual  trait  was,  as  his 
son  says,  "an  uncompromising  passion  for  truth," 
yet  in  the  sum  of  his  thinking  he  was  one  of  the 
master  sophists  of  the  age.  And  the  tracks  of 
his  sophistry  lead  straight  to  that  confusion  of 
positive  science  and  hypothetical  science  and 
philosophical  science  which  is,  perhaps,  the  most 
characteristic  mark  oi  the  last  century. 

Agnosticism,  according  to  Huxley's  own  de- 
finition of  the  word  which  he  invented  to  sum  up 
his  intellectual  procedure,  is  neither  scepticism 
nor  dogmatism;  it  "is  not  properly  described  as 
a  'negative'  creed,  nor  indeed  as  a  creed  of  any 
kind,  except  in  so  far  as  it  expresses  absolute 
faith  in  the  validity  of  a  principle,  which  is  as 
much  ethical  as  intellectual,  .  .  .  that  it  is  wrong 
for  a  man  to  say  that  he  is  certain  of  the  object- 
ive truth  of  any  proposition  unless  he  can  pro- 
duce evidence  which  logically  justifies  that  cer- 
tainty." Agnosticism,  then,  is  merely  the  honest 
adherence  to  evidence.  Now  no  state  of  mind  could 
be  more  exemplary  than  that  of  the  agnostic  when 
so  defined.  It  has  only  one  weakness,  that,  if  we 
could  accept  their  own  opinion,  it  includes  all 
men,  and  so  defines  nothing,  Huxley,  indeed, 
contrasts  the  procedure  of  the  agnostic  with 
theology,  and  declares  that  "agnosticism  can  be 
said  to  be  a  stage  in  its  evolution,  only  as  death 
may  be  said  to  be  the  final  stage  in  the  evolution 
of  life."    Really,  the  whole  argument,  for  one  so 


212     THE    DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

keen  as  Huxley,  is  rather  naive.  Does  he  sup- 
pose that  Cardinal  Newman,  for  instance,  would 
admit  that  his  theological  hypothesis  was  any 
less  supported  by  evidence  than  the  evolutionary 
hypothesis?  As  a  matter  of  fact  Newman  might 
retort  that  he  had  with  him  the  evidence  of  ages, 
whereas  Huxley  was  depending  at  bottom  on  the 
evidence  of  only  a  few  decades  of  time.  The 
difference  between  them  does  not  lie  in  their 
loyalty  or  disloyalty  to  evidence  per  se,  but  in 
the  kind  of  evidence  from  which  they  start ;  nor 

I  has  Huxley,  so  far  as  I  know,  ever  shown,  or 
even  seriously  tried  to  show,  that  the  inner 
evidence  which  gives  us  the  sense  of  moral  lib- 
erty  and  responsibility,  of  sin  and   holiness,  is 

I  less  logically  trustworthy  than  the  evidence  of 

ithe  eye  and  the  ear. 

That  is  the  weakness  of  agnosticism  as  defined 
by  its  inventor,  but  it  has  a  compensating  ad- 
vantage. As  actually  used  by  him  it  is  at  once 
a  sword  of  offence  and  a  buckler  of  safety ;  per- 
mitting the  most  truculent  dogmatism  when  the 
errors  of  an  enemy  are  to  be  exposed  and  the 
most  elusive  scepticism  when  the  enemy  charges 
in  return.  Indeed,  an  agnostic  might  briefly  and 
not  unfairly  be  defined  as  a  dogmatist  in  attack 
and  a  sceptic  in  defence,  which  is  but  another 
way  of  calling  him  a  sophist.  With  what  dexter- 
ity Huxley  wielded  this  double  weapon  may  be 
seen  in  his  use  of  the  great  question  of  scientific 


HUXLEY  213 

law.   More  than  once  {e.g.,  Science  and  Christian 
Tradition,  p.  134),  when  certain  deductions  from 
the  rigid  appHcation  of  law  are  brought  home  to 
him,  he  takes  refuge  in  a  sceptical  limitation  of 
law  to  the  mere  formulation  of  objective  exper- 
ience in  a  world  which  is  ultimately  moved  by 
forces   beyond    the    reach  of   man's    perceptive 
faculties.    And  against  the  preacher  who  rashly 
invades  the  scientific  field  he  can  declare  that 
"the  habitual  use  of  the  word  'law,'  in  the  sense 
of  an  active  thing,  is  almost  a  mark  of  pseudo- 
science;  it  characterizes  the  writings  of  those  who 
have  appropriated  the  forms  of  science  without 
knowing  anything  of  its  substance."   Yet  in  the 
same  essay,  when  he  opens  the  attack  upon  those 
who  would  retreat  into  a  region  beyond  scientific 
law,  he  avows  boldly  "the  fundamental  axiom  of  1 
scientific  thought,"  "that   there   is   not,  never! 
has  been,  and  never  will  be,  any  disorder  in  na- 
ture.   The  admission  of  the  occurrence  of  any 
event  which  was  not  the  logical  consequence  of 
the  immediately  antecedent  events,  according  to 
these  definite,  ascertained,  or  unascertained  rules  ; 
which  we  call  the  'laws  of  nature,'  would  be  an  1 
act  of  self-destruction  on  the  part  of  science."  ; 
And  elsewhere :  "We  ignore,  even  as  a  possibility,   1 
the  notion  of  any  interference  with  the  order  of   , 
Nature."    Now  when  we  consider  that  to  regard 
theact  of  the  will  which  originates  the  motion  of 
raising  the  arm  as  a  force  in  any  way  contrary  to 


214     THE  DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

the  law  of  gravitation,  is  in  Huxley's  mind  an 
unscientific  absurdity  {Pseudo-Scientific  Realism, 
passim),  that,  in  other  words,  Ufe  and  the  world 
are  to  him  a  pure  mechanism,  and  when  we  con- 
sider further  that  he  identifies  the  claims  of  sci- 
ence with  the  desire  of  truth  {Universities:  Actual 
and  Ideal,  passim),  it  really  should  not  have 
seemed  to  him  so  grave  an  error  to  use  the  word 
law  for  that  force  which  produces  the  absolute 
uniformity  defined  by  law.  It  is  Huxley  himself 
in  these  moments  of  attack  who  virtually,  if  not 
literally,  takes  law  "in  the  sense  of  an  active 
thing,"  which  in  his  moments  of  defence  he  so 
vigorously  repudiates. 

Inevitably  this  ambiguity  of  attitude  becomes 
even  more  perplexed  when  heapplies  the  notion 
of  scientific  law  to  the  deeper  problems  of  life. 
In  one  place,  for  Instance,  he  asserts  that  "there 
lies  in  the  nature  of  things  a  reason  for  every 
moral  law,  as  cogent  and  as  well  defined  as  that 
which  underlies  every  physical  law."  But  in  an- 
other place  he  takes  what,  from  his  principles, 
must  be  regarded  as  the  opposite  point  of  view: 
"The  notion  that  the  doctrine  of  evolution  can 
furnish  a  foundation  for  morals  seems  to  me  to  be 
an  illusion";  and  again  he  states  roundly  that 
"cosmic  nature  is  no  school  of  virtue,  but  the 
headquarters  of  the  enemy  of  ethical  nature." 
This  ambiguity  of  his  position  involves  not  only 
morals  but  the  fundamental  question  of  spirit- 


HUXLEY  215 

uality  and  materialism.  In  his  freer  moments  of 
attack  he  does  not  hesitate  to  fling  out  the  most 
relentless  dogmas  of  materialism.  The  actuality 
of  the  spiritual  world,  he  declares  in  one  of  his 
prefaces,  lies  entirely  within  the  province  of 
science  —  that  is  to  say,  is  amenable  to  the 
undeviating  operation  of  mechanical  law;  "the 
materials  of  consciousness  are  products  of  cere- 
bral activity,"  and  are  "the  result  of  molecular 
forces";  "we  are,"  by  an  extension  of  the  Car- 
tesian theory  of  the  lower  animals,  "conscious 
automata, . . .  parts  of  the  great  series  of  causes 
and  effects  which,  in  unbroken  continuity,  com- 
poses that  which  is,  and  has  been,  and  shall  be  — 
the  sum  of  existence."  That  should  seem  to  be  the 
most  explicit  materialism  and  necessitarianism; 
yet  hear  the  same  man  on  the  other  side!  "For 
my  part,  I  utterly  repudiate  and  anathematize 
the  intruder  [this  same  necessitarianism].  Fact 
I  know;  and  Law  I  know;  but  what  is  Necessity, 
save  an  empty  shadow  of  my  own  mind's  throw- 
ing?" In  other  words,  when  your  enemy  talks 
loosely  of  miracles  and  spiritual  experiences  and 
supernatural  freedom,  it  is  easy  to  crush  him  with 
this  bludgeon  of  an  unbroken  law  of  mechanical 
cause  and  effect ;  but  when  your  enemy  turns  on 
you  and  begins  to  draw  disagreeable  conclusions 
from  this  fatal  sequence,  it  is  the  part  of  the  skil- 
ful fencer  to  denounce  as  an  empty  shadow  any 
connection  between  such  a  law  and  necessity! 


2i6     THE    DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

Further  than  that,  Huxley  when  hard  pressed, 
instead  of  abiding  manfully  by  his  premisses, 
was  ready  to  sink  into  that  last  sophistry  of  the 
scientific  mind  and  deny  that  there  is  any 
distinction  between  the  materialistic  and  the 
spiritualistic  conception  of  life.  "In  itself,"  he 
says,  "it  is  of  little  moment  whether  we  express 
the  phsenomena  of  matter  in  terms  of  spirit;  or 
the  phaenomena  of  spirit  in  terms  of  matter." 
This  view  he  buttresses  {Science  and  Morals)  by 
calmly  assuming  that  St.  Augustine  and  Calvin 
were  at  one  with  him  in  holding  to  a  fatal  deter- 
mination. Is  it  necessary  to  say  that  St.  Augus- 
tine and  Calvin  —  whether  rightly  or  wrongly 
is  here  not  the  question  —  believed  in  a  spirit- 
ual power  apart  from  and  undetermined  by 
natural  law?  This  power  might  have  its  own  de- 
terminism, but,  relatively  to  natural  law,  it  was 
spontaneous  and  incalculable.  The  difference 
to  philosophy  and  conduct  between  holding  a 
spiritual  fatalism  and  holding  a  mechanical  de- 
terminism marks  the  distance  between  religion 
and  science  —  or,  at  least,  between  the  posi- 
tions of  the  English  bishops  and  of  Huxley.  If 
there  is  no  distinction  here,  why  then  all  the 
pother,  and  what  meaning  is  there  in  Huxley's 
cheerful  assumption  that  science  was  to  be  the 
end  of  the  Church  and  that  men  of  science  were 
to  supplant  the  bishops? 


HUXLEY  217 

Now  these  inconsistencies  in  Huxley  are  not 
the  result  of  a  progressive  change  in  his  views,  nor 
are  they  infrequent  or  superficial.  They  lie  at  the 
very  foundation  of  the  system  of  which  he  was 
the  most  distinguished  spokesman,  and  they  are 
more  conspicuous  in  him  than  in  others  merely 
because  at  any  given  moment  his  style  is  so  em- 
inently transparent.  They  spring,  indeed,  from 
a  false  extension  of  the  procedure  of  science  into  a 
philosophy  of  naturalism.  The  fact  is  simply  this : 
When  the  matter  is  squarely  faced  there  can  be  no 
science,  properly  speaking,  except  in  so  far  as  the 
world  appears  to  us  a  strictly  closed  mechanical 
system,  a  "block-universe"  as  WiUiam  James 
called  it,  which  contains  its  end  in  its  beginning 
and  displays  the  whole  in  every  part.  As  it  has 
been  picturesquely  expressed:  "Were  a  single 
dust-atom  destroyed,  the  universe  would  col- 
lapse." Absolute  regularity  is  the  sine  qua  non  of 
scientific  law,  and  the  moment  any  element  of  in- 
calculable spontaneity  is  admitted  into  the  sys- 
tem, that  moment  the  possibility  of  scientific  law 
is  so  far  excluded :  there  is  no  law  of  the  individual 
'or  the  unpredictable;  there  is  no  science  of  the 
soul  unless  man,  as  Taine  says,  is  no  more  than 
"a  very  simple  mechanism  which  analysis  can 
take  to  pieces  like  clockwork."  This  does  not 
mean  that  any  given  law  is  final  and  embraces  the 
whole  content  of  phenomena;  but  it  does  mean 
that  further  knowledge,  while  it  may  modify  a 


2i8    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

law  or  supplant  one  law  by  another,  still  leaves  us 
within  the  realm  of  absolute  mechanical  regu- 
larity. Such  a  closed  system  is  properly  called 
nature;  it  was  clearly  conceived  and  given  to 
philosophy  by  the  great  naturalists  of  the  seven- 
teenth century. 

Nature,  thus  conceived  as  a  block-system,  is 
the  proper  field  of  positive  science,  and  leads  to 
no  embarrassment  so  long  as  we  do  not  attempt 
anything  more  than  the  classification  of  physical 
phenomena  under  laws.  But  there  is  a  tendency 
in  the  human  mind  which  draws  it  almost  irre- 
sistibly to  pass  from  the  formulation  of  laws  to 
the  definition  of  the  force  or  cause  underlying 
them.  This  is  hypothetical  science.  Such  a  pro- 
cedure akeady  involves  a  certain  violence  to 
scientific  evidence,  but  it  does  not  stop  here. 
Suppose  there  exists  a  body  of  testimony,  accum- 
ulated through  thousands  of  years,  to  the  effect 
that  a  whole  world  of  our  inner  life  lies  outside  of 
that  block-universe  of  mechanical  determinism: 
what  then  is  the  man  of  hypothetical  science  to 
do  ?  He  may  deny  the  validity  of  any  evidence 
apart  from  that  which  leads  to  scientific  law,  and 
having  erected  this  law  of  mechanical  regularity 
into  an  active  cause  governing  and  controlling 
the  world,  he  may  set  it  in  opposition  to  the 
hypothesis  of  a  personal  God  which  Christians 
have  created  from  the  evidence  of  their  inner 
experience.  He  may  be  onesided,  but  he  will  be 


HUXLEY  219 

consistent.  In  this  sense,  and  with  a  consequence 
different  from  what  he  intended,  Frederic  Harri- 
son was  justified  in  saying  that  "  agnosticism  as 
a  religious  philosophy  per  se  rests  on  an  almost 
total  ignoring  of  history  and  social  evolution." 
But  suppose  further  that  our  scholar,  having 
naturally  broad  interests  and  sympathies,  is  still 
importuned  by  all  that  evidence  in  the  moral  and 
political  spheres  which  he  could  not  bring  into 
conformity  with  his  hypothesis:  what  will  he  do? 
In  attempting  to  cling  to  an  hypothesis  which  is 
based  on  the  exclusion  of  half  the  evidence  of 
life,  while  at  the  same  time  he  feels  the  appeal 
of  the  whole  range  of  evidence,  he  will  try  to  de- 
velop that  hypothesis  into  a  complete  philosophy 
of  life,  and  in  doing  so  he  will  necessarily  fall  into 
just  those  inconsistencies  which  strike  us  over 
and  over  again  in  Huxley.  He  will  become  a  vic- 
tim of  that  huge  self-contradiction  which  I  have 
called  philosophical  science. 

Now  we  all  know  how  completely  this  sophism 
took  possession  of  England  and  the  world  about 
the  middle  of  the  last  century.  In  particular  the 
magnitude  of  Darwin's  work  in  the  field  of  positive 
science  and  the  superb  simplicity  of  his  explana- 
tion of  the  whole  order  of  existence,  including 
man,  as  the  product  of  a  mechanical  law  of  selec- 
tion, easily  imposed  the  evolutionary  hypothesis 
as  a  lawgiver  upon  education  and  morals  and  relig- 
ion and  government.    And  to  the  authority  of 


220    THE    DRIFT    OF    ROMANTICISM 

Darwin  was  added  the  persuasiveness  of  Huxley's 
masterly  skill  as  lecturer  and  writer.  It  seemed  to 
the  men  who  heard  his  voice  as  if  the  long  ob- 
scurity that  had  involved  human  destiny  was  to 
be  rolled  away,  as  if  at  last  the  pathway  of  truth 
had  been  found,  and  the  world's  great  age  was 
about  to  be  renewed.  And  however  we  may  now 
see  the  inconsistencies  and  feel  what  in  another 
man  might  be  called  the  duplicity  that  underlay 
Huxley's  method  of  attack  and  defence,  there 
was  enough  of  the  stufT  of  positive  science  in  his 
doctrine  to  give  it  a  certain  moral  stiffness  and 
intellectual  rigour  which  must  always  claim  our 
admiration.  But  with  the  passage  of  years  a 
change  has  come  upon  philosophical  science.  The 
human  mind  could  not  long  rest  content  with  a 
system  which  was  so  glaringly  at  war  with  itself, 
and  indeed  there  are  signs  that  Huxley  himself 
was  not  always  satisfied  with  his  position.  But 
where  lay  the  way  of  escape  ?  These  men  would 
not  willingly  give  up  the  authority  which  seemed 
to  be  derived  from  the  actualities  of  positive  sci- 
ence, yet  they  began  to  see  that  the  hypothesis  of 
a  block-universe  had  brought  them  to  an  abso- 
lute impasse.  The  history  of  the  intellect  since 
the  days  of  Darwin's  supremacy,  therefore,  has 
been  marked  by  an  attempt  to  preserve  the  facts 
of  evolution  as  the  basis  of  a  scientific  philosophy, 
but  to  alter  the  evolutionary  hypothesis  so  as  to 
bring  it  into  harmony  with  the  spontaneous  part 


HUXLEY  221 

of  human  nature.  The  process  has  widened  the 
distance  between  positive  science  and  philosoph- 
ical science;  it  has  introduced  a  new  set  of  incon- 
sistencies, not  to  say  absurdities,  into  thought, 
but  it  is  extremely  interesting  for  the  way  in 
which  it  has  finally  brought  together  two  currents 
of  the  nineteenth  century  that  might  have  seemed 
to  a  superficial  observer  the  very  opposites  of  each 
other.  What  appeared  in  Huxley's  time,  and  still 
more  in  the  half-century  preceding  him,  to  be  the 
very  bulwark  against  those  laxer  principles  and 
tendencies  which  may  be  grouped  together  as  ro- 
mantic, has  gradually  thrown  off  its  hard  ration- 
alism, until  now  in  our  day  philosophical  science 
and  romanticism  are  actually  merging  together 
and  becoming  almost  indistinguishable.  In  place 
of  Huxley  we  have  William  James  and  Bergson. 
The  change  is  significant  and  worthy  of  analysis, 
for  the  true  meaning  of  a  movement  is  known  by 
its  end.  So  much  we  may  learn  from  Pragma- 
tism, even  while  criticizing  it. 

^Qt  is  it  difficult,  if  we  regard  the  material  and 
moral  forces  from  which  science  and  romanti- 
cism respectively  take  their  start,  to  see  how  these 
t^vb  apparent  enemies  have  come  to  join  hands  in 
a  ti^uce  if  not  in  an  alliance.  We  do  not  often 
stop  to  reflect  on  the  world  of  pain  and  horror 
which  underlies  this  surface  of  things  on  which  we 
move  so  comfortably.  Only  now  and  then  some 
accident,  some  physical  rebellion  as  it  might  be 


222     THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

called,  sets  loose  the  pent-up  daemonic  powers,  and 
for  a  moment  life  is  as  it  would  be  if  in  a  mad- 
house the  phrensied  patients  were  to  break  their 
fetters  and  overcome  their  keepers.  Each  force 
of  nature  in  itself  seems  to  be  limitless  in  its  po- 
tential activity,  and  in  so  far  as  it  is  unchecked 
or  unbalanced  by  some  other  force  becomes  the 
source  oi  ruin  to  mankind.  Manifestly  that. or- 
derly subordination  which  is  the  condition  of  our 
physical  well-being  depends  on  some  principle  of 
control  and  balance  which  is  not  inherent  in  the 
individual  forces  of  nature.  Furthermore,  if  our 
horror  at  these  calamities,  if  the  physical  repug- 
nance that  lies  always  concealed  in  our  breast, 
have  any  meaning,  it  is  in  the  testimony  they 
bear  to  a  certain  correspondence  on  the  one  hand 
between  our  sense  of  moral  evil  and  the  destruc- 
tiye  limitlessness  of  any  natural  force  in  itself, 
and  on  the  other  hand  between  our  sense  of  moral 
justice  and  the  imposition  of  order  and  subordi- 
nation upon  those  forces.  We  are  thrust  by  our 
emotions  into  an  absolute  dualism.  Now  the  point 
to  consider  is  that  pure  science  deals  with  these 
forces  in  themselves  and  as  unlimited,  and  with- 
out any  thought  of  such  human  distinctions.  A 
little  spark  kindles  a  fire,  and  instantly  the  flames 
sweep  over  a  city,  consuming  life  and  property 
and  spreading  everywhere  destruction  and  terror. 
Yet  with  this  terror  science  has  nothing  to  do;  it 
is  concerned  with  the  laws  of  heat.  Again  some 


HUXLEY  223 

movement  takes  place  within  the  earth;  the 
crust  on  which  we  walk  is  rent  and  shaken,  and 
the  helpless  human  creatures  are  killed  and  muti- 
lated as  ruthlessly  as  the  ants  in  their  little 
mound  over  which  we  inadvertently  stumble. 
Yet  with  this  hideous  fear  science  has  nothing  to 
-do;  it  is  concerned  with  the  laws  of  motion.  Nor 
is  the  human  body  itself  free  from  these  incur- 
sions of  uncontrolled  energy.  One  very  close  to 
us,  one  whose  fragile  beauty  has  filled  us  with  a 
long  apprehension  of  love,  is  seized  by  a  loath- 
some disease;  those  lower  forms  of  life  which  to 
our  vanity  we  seem  to  have  trampled  down  in 
our  progress  have  suddenly  risen  up  like  aveng- 
ing furies  and  laid  their  obscene  grip  on  what  was 
dearest  and  fairest  to  us.  We  look  on  in  an  agony 
of  suspense,  as  if  in  this  precious  body  the  very 
armies  of  good  and  evil  were  at  war.  Yet  all  the 
while  the  physician  watches  with  impassive, 
critical  eye,  studying  symptoms,  applying  reme- 
dies, awaiting  calmly  the  results:  his  very  effi- 
cacy as  a  man  of  science  depends  on  his  freedom 
from  those  emotions  which  are  tearing  at  our 
heartstrings;  he  is  concerned  with  the  laws  of 
parasitic  life. 

Science  is  properly  the  servant  of  our  emotions 
and  of  the  corresponding  sense  of  dualism,  but 
in  its  method  of  work  it  not  only  ignores  our  emo- 
tions, but  can  perform  its  true  service  only  so 
long  as  it  ignores  them  and  deals  with  the  pure 


224    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

forces  of    nature.    The  error  and  danger  arise 
!  when  it  disdains  to  be  a  servant  and  sets  itself  up 
as  mistress,  raising  its  means  into  an  end  and  its 
procedure  into  a  philosophy.   Moved  by  our  im- 
portunate consciousness  of  order  and  disorder, 
yet  bound  in  its  hypothetical  explanation  of  evo- 
lution to  consider  the  forces  of  nature  alone,  with- 
out the  admission  of  any  law  of  control  outside 
[of  them,  it  has  come  gradually  to  a  conception  of 
^  I  the  world  as  an  entity  containing  within  itself 
/  some  force  of  vitalism,  some  elan  vital,  which  by 
■  its  inherent  limitlessness  is  the  source  of  constant 
i  creation,   making   the   sum   of  things    actually 
j,  greater  to-day  than  it  was  yesterday  and,  from 
i    our  human  point  of  view,  more  orderly.  Sheer 
1  expansiveness  becomes  the  law  of  physical  life. 
.The  acceptance  of  this  hypothesis  of  an  incal- 
culable energy,  whose  action  to-day  can  in  no 
wise,  or  only  imperfectly,  be  predicted  from  its 
action  yesterday,  might  seem  to  evict  the  very 
possibility  of  scientific  law;   but  there  are  two 
things  to  consider.    In  the  first  place  this  hypo- 
thesis is  just  an  hypothesis  and  has  little  or  no 
relation  to  the  actual  work  of  positive  science. 
And  in  the  second  place  it  seduces  the  scientific 
mind  by  seeming  to  get  rid  altogether  of  that  dual- 
ism which  is  ignored  in  scientific  procedure.   As 
a  matter  of  fact  it  merely  changes  the  character 
of  that  dualism  by  setting  the  two  terms  apart 
at  the  beginning  and  end  of  time  instead  of  re- 


HUXLEY 

garding  them  as  existent  together  and  independ- 
ent of  time.^ 

From  this  rather  slippery  hypothesis  of  a  uni-1 
verse  in  the  process  of  continual  self-expansion  it  1 
is  but  a  step  to  the  modern  scientific  philosophy 
of  human  progress  as  depending,  not  on  any 
ideal  outside  of  evolution,  but  as  —  what  shall 
I  say?  —  as  self-causative.  Here  precisely  en- 
ters the  point  of  connection  between  philosoph- 
ical science  and  romanticism  f  but  to  understand 
its  full  meaning  we  must  look  back  into  the 
sources  of  the  second  member  of  the  alliance. 

Now,  in  attempting  to  characterize  the  historic 
romanticism  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  first 
trait  that  is  forced  upon  our  attention  is  the  note 
of  rebellion  from  the  classics.  That  hostility 
between  romanticism  and  classicism  is  funda- 
mental: we  cannot  escape  it.  Greek  philosophy, 
as  it  touches  upon  human  conduct  and  as  it  was 
handed  down  to  the  modern  world,  was  summed 

•  The  middle  terra  between  the  hypothesis  of  a  purely  mechanical 
evolution  and  the  hypothesis  of  evolution  as  conceived  by  Bergson  may 
be  found  in  the  evolutionary  monism  of  Haeckel,  which  has  been  beauti- 
fully analyzed  and  demolished  by  M.  Emile  Boutroux  in  his  recent  work. 
La  Science  et  la  Religion  dans  la  philosophie  conlemporaine. 

2  This  union  was  clearly  foreshadowed  in  Diderot;  it  was  developed 
by  Comte;  but  its  great  authority  could  not  come  until  after  the  work  of 
Darwin.  In  one  of  his  essays  Huxley  speaks  with  scorn  of  Mr.  Frederic 
Harrison's  Positivism,  and  asks:  "  What  has  Comtism  to  do  with  the 
'New  Philosophy'  [i.e.,  the  philosophy  of  science]?"  Mr.  Harrison 
might  easily  have  retorted.  In  fact  when  Huxley  boasted  that  the 
bishops  were  to  be  replaced  by  the  "  new  school  of  the  prophets  [i.e., 
men  of  science)  "  as  "  the  only  one  that  can  work  miracles,"  and  when 
he  acknowledged  that  "  the  interests  of  science  and  industry  are  identi- 
Q^iJ,"  he  was  merely  repeating  Comte's  early  theory  of  the  supplanting  of 
the  priest  and  the  soldier  by  the  man  of  science  and  the  man  of  business. 


226     THE    DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

up  in  the  Nicomachean  Ethics,  at  the  very  heart 
of  which  lies  the  classical  distinction  between  the 
infinite,  as  the  absolute,  and  the  limitless.  Ac- 
cording  to  Aristotle  the  active  nature  of  man  is 
made  up  of  desires,  or  impulses  {lirLOvixiai) ,  which 
in  themselves  are  incapable  of  self-restraint  and 
therefore  limitless  (aTrctpo?  yap  17  ttJs  eVt^i^/itas  </)uo-6s, 
Pol.,  II,  4;  the  translation  of  aTrccpos  in  Greek 
generally  as  "infinite"  instead  of  "limitless" 
has  been  the  source  of  endless  confusion  of 
ideas).  Furthermore  this  limitlessness  is  of  the 
very  essence  of  evil,  whereas  good  in  itself  may 

be  defined    as  a  limit   (to  yap  Kamv  rov  aTreipov  TO  8' 

dya^ov  TOW  TTCTTcpacr/AeVou) ,  and  the  aim  of  conduct 
is  to  acquire  that  golden  mean  which  is  nothing 
other  than  a  certain  bound  set  to  the  inherent 
limitlessness  of  our  impulsive  or  desiring  nature. 
The  determination  of  this  bound  in  each  case 
is  the  function  of  reason,  which  embraces  the 
whole  existence  of  man  as  an  organism  in  his 
environment  and  says  to  each  impulse  as  it 
arises,  thus  far  shalt  thou  go  and  no  further. 
But  as  the  basis  of  practical  life  Is  the  limitless 
sway  of  unrelated  Impulses,  reason,  to  establish 
its  balance  and  measure,  to  find,  that  Is,  Its 
norm  of  unity,  must  look  ultimately  to  some 
point  quite  outside  of  the  realm  of  impulse  and 
nature.  Hence  the  imposition  of  the  theoretical 
Ijfe,  as  Aristotle  calls  It,  upon  the  practical  — 
the  contemplation  of  that  absolute  unity  which 


HUXLEY  227 

is  unmoved  amid  all  that  moves.  This  unity  1 
not  of  nature  is  the  infinite;  it' is  the  very  op-  j 
posite  of  that  limitlessness  which  is  the  attribute  I 
of  nature  itself;  it  is  not  a  state  of  endless,  inde-  j 
finite  expansion,  but  is  on  the  contrary  that  state  / 
of   centralization   which   has  its   goal   in   itself 

{rrap  avrrjv  oiScvos  i<f>U(T6ai  tcAovs). 

The  revolt  from  this  essential  dualism  of  classi-  , 
cal  philosophy  began  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
That  age  was  notably  a  time  of  confused  think- 
ing and  of  reaching  out  in  many  directions.  But 
at  its  beginning,  and  always  in  the  background, 
lay  a  certain  mode  of  regarding  life,  the  orthodox 
mode  of  supernaturalism.  On  the  one  side  was 
the  great  flux  of  nature,  embracing  in  its  endless 
activity  the  heart  of  man  and  the  phenomenal 
world.  "The  sea  itself,"  says  Bossuet,  "has  not 
more  waves  when  it  is  agitated  by  the  winds  than 
are  the  diverse  thoughts  that  rise  from  this  abyss 
without  bottom,  from  this  impenetrable  mystery 
of  the  heart  of  man."  Within  this  chaos  of  the 
human  breast  sat  reason  as  a  kind  of  king  or  ar- 
biter, by  its  command  bringing  order  out  of  dis- 
order. But  reason  itself,  as  understood  by  the 
characteristic  minds  of  the  age,  belonged  to  na- 
ture, and  was  a  sufficient  guide  only  so  long  as  it 
listened  to  the  voice  of  a  restraining  power  above 
and  outside  of  nature.  The  true  division  was  not 
between  reason  and  instinct  or  desire,  but  be- 
tween all  these  together,  as  forces  of  nature,  and 


^ ^  V228    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

^  ^  superrational  insight.  That  is  to  say,  the  ortho- 
5,V^  dox  view  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  the 
classical  dualism  which  had  become  involved 
and  obscured  in  a  vast  system  of  Christian 
mythology  and  theology.  The  irremediable  fault, 
default  one  might  say,  of  the  age  was  that  it 
never  attained  to  a  clear  and  untrammelled  de- 
finition of  the  superrational  insight  upon  which 
its  faith  was  based.  Pascal,  indeed,  approached 
such  a  definition  when  he  set  the  heart  over 
against  reason  and  concupiscence,  meaning  by 
heart  not  so  much  the  desires  and  emotions,  as 
the  contrast  with  concupiscence  plainly  shows, 
but  that  faculty  by  which  we  intuitively  ap- 
prehend the  infinite  and  eternal.  Yet  even  in 
Pascal  this  faculty  of  intuition  was  never  freed 
from  the  bondage  of  revelation  and  question- 
able authority,  while  in  most  of  his  religious 
contemporaries  it  was  inextricably  confused  with 
some  external  voice  of  the  Bible  or  the  Church, 
Not  many  men  to-day  have  the  patience  to  read 
far  in  the  endless  theological  literature  of  that 
age;  and  with  reason.  ^  is  the  curse  of  the  Re- 
formation that  the  search  for  truth  was  largely 
diverted  by  it  into  a  monstrous  and  deadening 
discussion  over  the  particular  instrument  or  in- 
stitution to  which  the  truth  was  supposed  to  be 
once  and  for  all  imparted  as  a  sacred  deposit.  He 
who  is  willing  and  strong  to  read  those  mighty 
books  may  be  fortified  in  his  own  soul  by  feeling 


HUXLEY  229 

that  the  tremendous  earnestness  of  this  war  over 
authority  must  have  impHed,  beneath  all  the  bat- 
tle of  words,  an  equal  earnestness  over  the  truth 
for  which  the  debated  authority  was  supposed  to 
stand.  But  the  actual  result  of  that  debate  was 
to  weary  and  bewilder  the  mind  of  contemporary 
men.  Gradually  the  whole  question  of  traditional 
authority,  and  with  it  the  higher  intuition  which 
had  been  so  obstinately  identified  with  this  au- 
thority, begins  to  lose  its  hold,  and  in  its  place 
comes  the  new  reign  of  naturalism.  ^ 

Now  naturalism  is  precisely  the  denial  of  any 
revealed  authority  or  supernatural  intuition 
whatsoever.  For  the  government  of  the  fluctu- 
ating element  of  nature  it  looks  to  reason  alone,  j 
which  it  recognizes  as  but  another,  if  higher,  as-  I 
pect  of  the  same  nature.  Hence  the  dominant 
philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  a  ra- 
tionalism, which  in  religion  denied,  or  at  least 
minimized,  all  that  is  mysterious  and  escapes  the 
net  of  logic,  and  in  science  regarded  the  world  as 
a  vast  machine  which  can  be  perfectly  expressed 
in  a  mathematical  equation.  Literature  followed 
the  lead  and  became  rational  and  pseudo-classic. 
I  would  not  exaggerate  the  regularity  of  this  de- 
velopment, for,  after  all,  the  human  mind  remains 
always  essentially  the  same  and  varies  only  as 
one  or  another  element  comes  uppermost.  And 
in  particular  any  comment  on  the  pseudo-classic 
literature  (which  in  itself  has  many  comfortable 


^ 


230     THE   DRIFT    OF    ROMANTICISM 

excellences)  should  not  fail  to  distinguish  the 
truly  Augustan  circle  of  Butler  and  Johnson  and 
Reynolds  and  Goldsmith  and  Burke,  whose  hu- 
manism, like  that  of  Horace,  contained,  not  so 
much  explicitly  as  in  solution,  the  higher  insight 
which  the  philosophy  of  their  age  was  so  busily 
hiding  away.  They  contained,  that  is  to  say, 
some  marks  of  true  classicism  as  contrasted  with 
pseudo-classicism.  Nevertheless  the  main  cur- 
rent of  the  times  was  evident  enough,  and  on  its 
surface  carried  religion  and  science  and  litera- 
ture in  a  compliant  brotherhood. 

Johnson  and  his  school  belonged  essentially  to 
the  main  rationalistic  stream  of  the  age,  though 
in  some  respects  they  surpassed  it.  But  by  their 
side  there  was  springing  up  another  school, 
equally  a  child  of  naturalism,  but  hostile  to  what 
may  be  called  the  official  philosophy.  Natural- 
ism acknowledged  both  the  reason  and  the  in- 
stincts or  emotions  as  belonging  to  the  nature  of 
man,  and  thus  manifestly  left  the  door  open  to 
a  revolt  against  the  tyranny  of  one  element  of 
nature  over  the  other.  Accordingly,  almost  with 
the  beginning  of  rationalism  we  see  springing  up, 
timidly  and  uncertainly  at  first,  various  forms  of 
appeaTto  pure  instinct  and  unrestrained  emotion. 
This  voice  of  insubordination  first  became  clear 
and  defiant  and  fully  self-conscious  in  Blake;  and 
the  message  of  Blake,  repeated  in  a  hundred  vari- 
ous notes,  now  tender  and  piercingly  sweet,  now 


HUXLEY  231 

blurred  by  strange  rumblings  of  thunderous 
madness,  is  everywhere  a  summons  to  the  per- 
fect freedom  of  instinct  and  primitive  emotion 
and  a  denunciation  of  the  control  demanded  by 
reason  or  by  authority  of  any  sort : 

Those  who  restrain  desire,  do  so  because  theirs  is  weak 
enough  to  be  restrained;  and  the  restrainer  or  reason 
usurps  its  place  and  governs  the  unwiUing. 

The  road  of  excess  leads  to  the  palace  of  wisdom. 

He  who  desires  but  acts  not,  breeds  pestilence. 

These  epigrams  are  from  The  Marriage  of  Heaven 
and  Hell,  a  book  which  Swinburne  was  to  rank 
"as  about  the  greatest  produced  by  the  eight- 
eenth century  in  the  line  of  high  poetry  and 
spiritual  speculation,"  and  which  to  Mr.  Arthur 
Symons  was  an  anticipation  of  Nietzsche:  "No 
one  can  think  and  escape  Nietzsche ;  but  Nietz- 
sche has  come  after  Blake,  and  will  pass  before 
Blake  passes."  Now  Swinburne  and  Mr.  Sy- 
mons were  indubitably  right  in  seeing  in  such 
passages  as  these  the  very  bible  of  romanticism, 
and  Blake's  place  as  an  expositor  of  that  move- 
ment, for  England  at  least,  is  coming  to  be  gen- 
erally admitted.  But  in  holding  up  Blake's  re- 
volt against  reason  as  spiritual  speculation  they, 
and  others,  have  fallen  into  the  error  which,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  has  made  of  romanticism  the  source 
of  endless  illusions. 


232    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

In  the  field  of  the  imagination  the  school  of 
Blake  at  the  last  carried  victory  with  a  high 
hanH  over  the  pseudo-classic  and  humanistic 
writers,  and  the  nineteenth  century  opens  upon 
a  world  pretty  well  divided  between  the  quarrel- 
some twins  of  rational  science  and  irrational 
romanticism.  In  so  far  as  the  romantic  imagina- 
tion yields  to  the  self-sufficiency  of  instinct  and 
emotion  it  implies  a  real  revolt  from  rationalism; 
it  is  in  a  way  even  more  hostile  to  rationalism 
than  the  classic  use  of  the  imagination,  for  class- 
icism never  involved  a  rejection  of  the  reason, 
though  it  difTered  from  pseudo-classicism  by 
leaving  the  door  open  to  an  intuition  aboveTfea- 
son.  But  the  peculiar  tone  of  romantic  writing 
comes  not  so  much  from  the  mere  revolt  against 
pseudo-classicism  as  from  ike.  illusion  that  this 
revolt  is  a  return  to  spiritual  insight.  Here  I  am 
treading  on  slippery  ground,  and  it  behooves  me 
to  walk  warily.  That  all  the  spiritual  aspirations 
of  the  nineteenth  century  were  of  a  bastard  birth, 
only  a  very  ignorant  or  wilful  man  would  assert. 
(Humanity  is  larger  than  any  formula,  and  no  age 
[can  be  limited  by  a  label.  In  the  romantic  litera- 
ture that  unfolds  from  Blake  there  is  much  that  is 
simply  true,  much  that  is  beautiful  and  magni- 
ficent, and  there  are  moments  that  express  the 
divine  awe  that  belongs  to  the  sudden  inflooding 
of  the  veritable  other-world;  but  in  the  most 
characteristic  moods  of  that  literature,  when  it 


HUXLEY  233 

expresses  most  perfectly  the  main  current  of  the^.. 
age,  there  will  be  found,  I  believe,  a  deep  confu-  [ 
sion  of  ideas  which  results  from  assimilating  the  j 
rebellion  of  the  lower  element  of  our  nature  with  | 
the  control  that  comes  from  above  nature.  For 
the  infinite  spirit  which  makes  itself  known  as 
a  restraining  check  and  a  law  of  concentration 
within  the  flux  of  nature,  this  new  aspiration  of 
liberty  would  substitute  the  mere  endless  expan- 
sion which  ensues  upon  the  denial  of  any  restraint 
whatsoever;  in  place  of  the  higher  intuition  which 
is  above  reason  it  would  commit  mankind  to  the 
lower  intuition  which  is  beneath  reason.  This 
illusion  of  the  senses  has  dazzled  the  human  mind 
in  other  ages  as  well  as  in  the  present.  It  shows'^ 
itself  here  and  there  in  the  classics  of  antiquity. 
It  developed  a  special  form  in  the  Alexandrian 
union  of  Oriental  religion  and  Occidental  philo- 
sophy, and  was  thus  passed  on  to  the  Middle  Ages. 
It  can  be  found  in  the  seventeenth  century  beside 
the  true  insight.  It  assumes  many  disguises  and  is 
often  extremely  difficult  to  distinguish  from  the 
supreme  disillusion.  The  very  fact  that  the  same 
word,  romantic,  is  used  to  designate  the  wonder 
of  the  infinite  and  the  wonder  of  the  limitless 
shows  how  easily  we  merge  together  these  extreme 
opposites.  But  the  historic  romanticism  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  when  it  strikes  its  central 
note,  whether  it  be  the  morbid  egotism  of  a  Beck- 
ford,  or  the  religious  defalcation  of  a  Newman, 


/ 


234    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

or  the  sestheticism  of  a  Pater,  or  the  dregs  of 
naturalistic  pantheism  seen  in  a  Fiona  Macleod, 
or  the  impotent  revolt  from  humanitarian  sym- 
pathy of  a  Nietzsche  —  this  romanticism  is  in  its 
essence  a  denial  of  classical  dualism  and  an  illus- 
ory substitution  of  the  mere  limitless  expansion 
of  our  impulsive  nature  for  that  true  infinite 
within  the  heart  of  man,  which  is  not  of  nature 
and  whose  voice  is  heard  as  the  Inner  check,  re- 
straining, centralizing,  and  forming. 

If.romanticism  is  thus  rightly  defined,Lits  point 
of  contact  with  science  is  easily  marked.   Those 
limitless  forces  which  were  raised  into  the  scien- 
tific hypothesis  of  a  self-evolving,  or  rather  self- 
creating,  universe  are  the  exact  counterpart  in 
j  outer  nature  of  those  limitless  desires  or  impulses 
I  in  the  heart  which  are  the  substance  of  the  ro- 
j  mantic  illusion.  They  find  their  union  in  that  very 
1  modern  philosophy  of  life  which  may  be  called 
indifferently  scientific  or  romantic.   As  it  is  con- 
cerned with  conduct  and  the  inner  life  rather  than 
with  material  phenomena,  it  may  be  regarded  as 
the  offspring  of  romanticism ;  as  it  enjoys  its  great 
authority  from  a  supposed  connection  with  the 
actual  discoveries  of  physical  law,  and  has  ob- 
tained its  precise  character  from  the  evolutionary 
hypothesis,  it  may  with  equal  propriety  be  re- 
garded as  the  bastard  offspring  of  science  —  as, 
in  a  word,  the  latest  form  of  philosophical  sci- 
ence.    The    keynote    of    this    new    philosophy, 


HUXLEY  235 

whether  it  take  one  of  the  many  forms  of  Prag- 
matism or  express  itself  in  the  evolutionary  lan- 
guage of  M.  Bergson  or  conceal  itself  in  the  sar- 
donic indifference  of  the  man  in  the  street,  is  a 
kind  of  laisser-faire,  a  belief  that,  as  the  physical 
world  has  unrolled  itself  by  its  own  expansive 
forces,  so  human  society  progresses  by  some  uni- 
versal instinct,  needing  no  rational  and  selective 
guidance,  no  imposition  of  moral  restraint,  no 
conscious  insight. 

And  mark  well,  we  are  here  concerned  not  with 
an  idle  question  of  the  schools,  but  with  a  very 
real  outcome  in  conduct.  You  will  find  the  trace 
of  this  philosophy  in  every  department  of  life.  It 
has  remoulded  our  whole  practice  of  education; 
and  this  perhaps  is  the  point  where  its  influence  is 
clearest  and  where  attack  may  be  most  success- 
fully directed.  Perhaps  we  do  not  often  stop  to 
consider  the  relation  between  the  usurpation  of 
purely  scientific  studies  in  our  college  curriculum 
with  the  Rousselian  notion  that  education  must 
place  no  restraint  upon  the  child,  but  must 
merely  help  him  to  expand  in  the  direction  of  his 
emotional  instincts;  yet  in  reality  that  relation  is 
to-day  the  main  factor  in  shaping  our  pedagogical 
theories.  Positive  science  is  a  noble  vocation,  but 
just  so  sure  as  it  is  made  in  considerable  part  the 
basis  of  education,  instead  of  being  treated  as 
a  profession,  like  law  or  medicine,  to  be  taken 
up  after  a  general  education,  just  so  surely  the 


236    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

confusions  of  philosophical  science  will  follow  and 
claim  authority  in  our  schools.  The  unhampered 
elective  system,  which  is  merely  the  pedagogical 
form  of  the  new  philosophy  of  laisser-faire,  is  in  a 
way  anything  and  everything;  but  one  character- 
istic and  one  result  of  it  are  omnipresent.  It  is 
characterized  by  a  revolt  from  Greek  and  Latin, 
due  in  part  no  doubt  to  such  subsidiary  causes  as 
the  pedantry  which  laid  its  paralyzing  hand  on 
classical  instruction,  but  due  more  essentially  to 
the  hostility  between  the  classical  way  of  viewing 
life  and  the  new  juncture  of  romantic  and  scien- 
tific philosophy.  The  result  of  the  modern  sys- 
tem is  a  laxity  of  mind  in  those  who  have  drifted 
through  our  institutions  from  kindergarten  to 
university,  a  repugnance  for  good  reading,  in  a 
word,  that  lack  of  real  education  which  is  more 
and  more  deplored  by  instructors  in  school  and 
college. 

Tn  politics  the  spirit  of  laisser-faire  shows  it- 
self in  the  feeling  that  to  be  right  we  need  only 
follow  unhesitatingly  the  clamour  of  the  day; 
whereas  any  suppression  of  a  self-assertive  move- 
ment in  favour  of  a  saner  ideal  already  established 
is  denounced  as  reaction  and  death.  Take,  for 
Instance,  our  attitude  towards  socialism.  Per- 
haps no  comment  is  more  frequently  on  the  lips 
of  the  man  in  the  street  —  that  mysterious  arbiter 
of  civilization  —  than  the  words:  It  is  bound  to 
come,  why  strive  against  it  ?   As  a  matter  of  fact 


/  ^ 

HUXLEY  237 

socialism,  in  some  very  imperfect  form,  may  in- 
deed come,  but  is  by  no  means  bound  to  come. 
To  say^that  the  whole  teaching  of  history  proves 
its  necessity  is  to  forget  most  of  the  chapters  of  ^o  '• 
that  book,  and  is  to  fall  into  the  common  error  Cv  ^-f-' 
of  the  half-educated  who  extend  their  knowledge  ^ 
of  one  age  over  all  ages.  I  cannot  see  much  differ- 
ence between  those  who  accept  some  form  of 
socialism  because  by  the  very  definition  of  Karl 
Marx  it  is  a  "fatal  necessity,"  and  those  who 
accepted  the  old  scholastic  notion  of  God,  with 
all  its  consequences,  because  by  their  own  defini- 
tion of  God  he  must  exist.  The  question  here, 
however,  is  not  the  goodness  or  evil  of  socialism 
in  itself,  but  the  perilous  state  of  any  society 
which  for  some  blind  law  of  evolution  surrenders 
its  right  to  criticize  and  to  determine  its  own 
course  rationally.  "Man,"  says  M.  Georges 
Sorel,  the  philosopher  and  for  a  time  one  of  the 
leaders  of  the  "syndicalist"  branch  of  socialism 
in  France —  "man  has  genius  only  in  the  measure 
that  he  does  not  reflect."  And  when  asked  what 
new  form  of  government  should  be  erected  on  the 
ruins  of  society  brought  about  by  the  general 
strike,  M.  Sorel  replied  that  with  such  construct- 
ive thought  for  the  future  we  had  nothing  to  do; 
we  had  learned  from  Bergson  to  trust  ourselves 
implicitly  to  the  blind  instinctive  forces  of  nature. 
In  like  manner  in  regard  to  female  suffrage:  we 
deceive  ourselves  if  we  suppose  that  its  admission 


238    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

or  rejection  will  be  the  result  of  argument  and 
rational  conviction.  The  power  that  is  bringing 
it  into  practical  life  is  the  sentiment  heard  from 
the  mouth  of  every  other  man  you  meet:  If  the 
women  want  it,  why,  let  them  have  it.  And  this 
sentiment  finds  support  in  the  weary  fatalism  of 
the  day:  It  is  bound  to  come  whether  you  like  it  or 
not;  why  resist  the  irresistible?  Again,  the  ques- 
tion is  not  whether  female  suffrage  is  a  good  or  an 
evil  thing  in  itself,  but  the  ignoble  abdication  of 
judgement  in  accepting  any  present  tendency 
as  a  fatal  force  which  it  is  useless,  if  not  wrong,  to 
curb. 

And  so,  to  pass  to  quite  another  field,  the  lais- 
ser-faire  of  philosophical  science  is  beginning  to" 
modify  our  whole  treatment  of  crime.  We  no 
longer  punish  the  criminal  as  a  being  responsible 
for  his  acts,  under  the  belief  that  there  is  in  man  a 
voluntary  power  to  shape  his  own  character,  but 
when  we  punish  him  at  all,  we  do  so  apologet- 
ically, as  if  society  and  not  he  were  the  guilty 
party,  and  as  if  his  crime  were  merely  one  of  the 
products  of  evolution,  like  any  disease  to  be  cured 
by  fresh  air  and  flattery.  I  have  no  desire  to 
enter  into  the  intricacies  of  the  new  penology. 
But  I  have  been  impressed  by  two  opinions  from 
very  diverse  sources.  I  recall  reading  in  one  of 
the  books  of  that  connoisseur  of  the  underworld, 
the  late  Josiah  Flynt,  the  remark  of  a  professional 
burglar  to  the  effect  that  the  only  prevention 


HUXLEY  239 

against  crime  was  sure  and  sharp  punishment. 
And  I  connect  with  this  observation  the  recent 
statement  of  the  Police  Commissioner  of  New 
York,  to  the  effect  that  the  excess  of  violence  and 
lawlessness  in  this  city  is  due  to  the  number  of  sus- 
pended sentences  and  the  general  feeling  among 
those  criminally  disposed  that  the  courts  will  not 
convict.  Mr.  Waldo  may  have  had  various  rea- 
sons for  offering  such  an  apology  for  his  depart- 
ment, but  it  is  significant  to  compare  certain 
statistics  of  New  York  with  those  of  London 
where  the  older  habits  of  swift  and  relentless 
judgement  still  prevail.  In  our  American  city  the 
average  annual  number  of  murders  for  the  years 
1908-10  was  one  hundred  and  seventeen,  while 
the  average  number  of  convictions  was  only 
twenty-five.  In  London,  with  its  population  of 
seven  million,  the  average  for  those  years  was 
twenty  murders,  for  which  fifteen  persons  either 
committed  suicide  before  police  action  or  were 
convicted.^   Among  the  causes  for  this  alarming 

>  The  following  statistics  from  a  leading  article  in  the  London  Nation 
of  March  30,  1912,  entitled  The  Breakdown  of  American  Justice,  give  a 
wider  range  to  the  question:  "  Since  1885  there  have  been  some  177,000 
murders  and  homicides  in  the  United  States,  but  under  3000  executions. 
In  188s  the  number  of  murders  was  1808;  in  1895  it  had  risen  to  10,500; 
in  1910  it  stood  at  8975.  In  1885  the  number  of  executions  was  108;  in 
1895  it  was  132;  in  1910  it  was  104.  Roughly  speaking,  Americans  are 
now  killing  one  another  at  the  rate  of  over  9000  a  year.  Looking  over 
the  statistics  of  the  past  seven-and-twenty  years,  one  finds  that,  while 
executions  have  remained  virtually  stationary,  murders  and  homicides 
have  multiplied  five-fold.  In  1885  for  every  murderer  executed  seven- 
teen murders  were  committed;  in  1895  the  proportion  was  one  to  seventy- 
nine;  in  1910  it  was  one  to  eighty-six.  There  are,  indeed,  few  crimes  of 
which  an  American  can  more  safely  be  guilty.  If  he  commits  a  murder 


240    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

disproportion  our  evolutionary  attitude  towards 
crime  is  certainly  not  the  least  effective.  In  the 
end  this  whole  philosophy  of  naturalism,  which 
bids  us  follow  the  lead  of  some  blind  self-develop- 
ing instinct,  is  subject  to  the  rebuke  uttered  by 
Bishop  Butler  long  ago:  "A  late  author  [Wollas- 
ton]  of  great  and  deserved  reputation  says,  that  to 
place  virtue  in  following  nature,  is  at  best  a  loose 
way  of  talk.  And  he  has  reason  to  say  this,  if 
what  I  think  he  intends  to  express,  though  with 
great  decency,  be  true,  that  scarce  any  other  sense 
can  be  put  upon  those  words,  but  acting  as  any  of 
the  several  parts,  without  distinction,  of  a  man's 
nature  happened  most  to  incline  him." 

In  these  practical  and,  perhaps,  debatable  ap- 
plications we  may  seem  to  have  got  far  away 
from  the  man  whom  I  upheld  as  the  typical 
spokesman  of  philosophical  science.  In  fact  the 
rational  hypothesis  of  evolution  as  proclaimed  by 
Huxley  was,  superficially  considered,  the  very 
opposite  of  the  confessedly  anti-rational  hypo- 
thesis that  lends  authority  to  the  doctrine  of  moral 

the  odds  are  more  than  three  to  one  against  his  ever  being  brought  to 
trial;  they  are  more  than  ten  to  one  against  his  being  sentenced  to  im- 
prisonment; and,  as  has  been  said,  they  are  more  than  eighty  to  one 
against  his  suffering  the  extreme  penalty  of  the  law.  Those  are  the 
chances  officially  ascertained  from  official  statistics,  and  they  apply  to 
the  country  as  a  whole  and  to  all  its  people.  But  it  need  hardly  be  said 
that  if  the  murderer  is  a  white  man  the  odds  in  his  favour  are  very  much 
above  the  statistical  average,  and  very  much  below  them  if  he  is  a  negro. 
Only  one  country  in  the  world,  Mexico,  exceeds  the  American  record  of 
murders,  a  record  that  is  proportionally  five  times  as  great  in  the  United 
States  as  in  Australia,  more  than  fourteen  times  as  great  as  in  England 
and  Wales,  eight  times  as  great  as  in  Japan,  ten  times  as  great  as  in 
Canada,  and  about  twenty-five  times  as  great  as  in  Germany." 


HUXLEY  241 

laisser-faire.  Nevertheless  their  parentage  is  cer- 
tain, and  even  in  Huxley  hints  of  the  derived 
philosophy  are  not  infrequent. 

In  education,  though  Huxley's  interests  were 
too  broad  and  in  some  respects  too  literary  to  per- 
mit a  harsh  condemnation  of  the  humanities,  yet 
all  his  energy  was  devoted  to  introducing  science 
into  the  curriculum  of  the  universities  and 
schools.  No  doubt  his  action  was  justifiable  to  a 
certain  extent  and  redounded  to  the  genuine  pro- 
fit of  pure  science ;  but  it  had  also  the  negative  re- 
sult at  least  of  starting  that  transformation  which 
has  made  of  our  classrooms  a  nursery  for  the 
sophisms  of  philosophical  science.  He  was  con- 
vinced that  the  sciences  in  themselves  are  suf- 
ficient for  a  liberal  education,  and  on  occasion  he 
was  ready  to  commend  a  foundation  which  made 
"no  provision  for  'mere  literary  instruction  and 
education,'"  meaning  by  this  "the  ordinary 
classical  course  of  our  schools  and  universities." 
Biology,  he  thought,  included  really  the  whole 
philosophy  of  life;  and  education  he  limited  to 
"instruction  of  the  intellect  in  the  laws  of  nature." 
If  there  was  apparent  liberality  in  his  extension 
of  these  laws  of  nature  to  include  "not  merely 
things  and  their  forces,  but  men  and  their  ways," 
there  was  also  in  it  the  germ  of  a  mischievous 
ambiguity. 

In  matters  political  Huxley's  practical  sense 
of  affairs  kept  his  judgement  clearer,  and  I  do 


:iC\ 


242     THE    DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

not  know  that  there  is  anything  in  his  writings 
which  contradicts  his  expressed  fear  and  dishke 
of  ^'regimentation  and  individualism  —  enforced 
SociaHsm  and  Anarchy."  He  has  ringing  words 
of  rebuke  for  the  whole  poHcy  of  drifting  (see, 
for  instance,  his  letter  of  March  21,  1886,  to  a 
Member  of  Parhament).  Yet  the  real  tendency 
of  his  ideas  comes  out  plainly  enough  in  his  at- 
titude towards  female  suffrage.  He  was  himself 
strongly  opposed  to  the  admission  of  women  into 
politics,  holding  for  biological  reasons  a  sharp 
distinction  between  the  spheres  of  the  two  sexes. 
Nevertheless,  when  he  came  to  deal  directly  with 
the  emancipation  of  women  his  method  was  that 
of  the  man  in  the  street.  "Let  them  have  a  fair 
field,"  he  said,  "but  let  them  understand,  as  the 
necessary  correlative,  that  they  are  to  have  no 
favour.  Let  nature  alone  sit  high  above  the  lists, 
'rain  influence  and  judge  the  prize.'" 

The  new  romantic  philosophy  of  evolution  as 
a  continuous  process  of  self-creation  had  scarcely 
arisen  to  perturb  the  rationalism  of  Huxley,  and 
he  was  too  stalwartly  intellectual  to  have  suc- 
cumbed to  it  even  if  it  had  been  in  the  air ;  yet  the 
outcome  of  his  teaching  was  that  exaltation  of 
science  which  laid  the  minds  of  the  next  genera- 
tion open  to  its  alluring  seduction.  The  final  in- 
fluence of  his  words,  if  not  always  his  avowed  in- 
tention, was  to  establish  the  new  law  of  progress: 
Let  nature  sit  high  above  the  lists;  which  may  be 


HUXLEY  243 

interpreted  by  his  own  remark  on  another  occa- 
sion: "The  best  way  of  getting  disorder  into  order 
[is]  to  let  it  alone."  Not  many  lives  in  the  Vic- 
torian era  were  more  unselfish  than  his,  not  many 
men  pursued  truth  with  a  nobler  devotion,  not 
many  had  broader  and  finer  interests;  neverthe- 
less, in  the  end  it  must  be  said,  sadly  and  rever- 
ently, that  his  legacy  to  mankind  was  confusion 
of  ideas  and  relaxation  of  judgement. 

We  have  seen  the  triumphs  of  Huxley  at  Ox- 
ford, the  seat  of  his  enemies.  Let  us  take  leave 
of  this  somewhat  ungrateful  theme  by  calling  up 
another  scene  at  the  same  university.  In  1864, 
there  was  a  Diocesan  Conference  at  Oxford. 
There  chanced  at  this  time  to  be  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood a  man  who  was  neither  priest  nor 
scientist,  a  man  given  to  absurd  freaks  of  intel- 
lectual charlatanry,  yet  showing  at  times  also 
such  marvellous  and  sudden  penetration  into  the 
heart  of  things  as  comes  only  to  genius.  It  was 
Disraeli.  "He  lounged  into  the  assembly,"  so  the 
scene  is  described  by  Froude,  "in  a  black  velvet 
shooting-coat  and  a  wide-awake  hat,  as  if  he  had 
been  accidentally  passing  through  the  town. .  . . 
He  began  in  his  usual  affected  manner,  slowly 
and  rather  pompously,  as  if  he  had  nothing  to 
say  beyond  perfunctory  platitudes."  And  then, 
turning  to  the  presiding  officer,  the  same  Bishop 
Wilberforce  whom  four  years  earlier  Huxley 
had  so  crushingly  rebuked,  he  uttered  one  of  his 


/ 


/ 


244    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

enigmatic  and  unforgettable  epigrams:  "What  is 
the  question  now  placed  before  society  with  a  glib- 
ness  the  most  astounding?  The  question  is  this: 
Is  man  an  ape  or  an  angel?  I,  my  lord,  am  on  the 
side  of  the  angels."  The  audience,  not  kindly 
disposed  to  the  speaker,  applauded  the  words  as 
a  jest ;  they  were  carried  the  next  day  over  the 
whole  land  by  the  newspapers ;  they  have  often 
been  repeated  as  an  example  of  Disraeli's  brilliant 
but  empty  wit.  I  suspect  that  beneath  their  sur- 
face glitter,  and  hidden  within  their  metaphor 
pointed  to  suit  an  Oriental  taste,  these  words 
contain  a  truth  that  shall  some  day  break  to 
pieces  the  new  philosophy  which  Huxley  spent 
his  life  so  devotedly  to  establish. 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM 

I        '"'' 

The  life  of  man  consists  of  impulses  which 
spring  from  the  coming  together  of  inner  desires 
and  outer  impressions.  By  the  word  desires  is 
here  not  meant  the  intelligent  want  of  a  definite  / 
object,  but  the  mere  outreaching  of  vital  energy .1^ 
Desires  and  impressions,  so  far  as  our  knowledge 
attains,  cannot  exist  independently,  that  is  to 
say,  there  can  be  no  living  organism  without  the 
constant  interaction  of  an  inner  vital  energy  and 
an  enveloping  world.  Impulses  tend  to  pass  into 
mental  and  physical  activities,  of  the  latter  of 
which  many  belong  to  our  animal  functions  and 
scarcely  reach  to  the  senses.  Mental  activities 
react  in  the  form  of  new  desires,  physical  activ- 
ities in  the  form  of  new  impressions.  Certain  ac- 
tivities are  beneficial  to  our  organization,  others 
are  detrimental.  The  sum  of  desires  and  impres- 
sions we  call  the  great  self-moving,  incessant  flux. 

n 

Beside  the  flux  of  life  there  is  also  that  within 
man  which  displays  itself  intermittently  as  an 
inhibition  upon  this  or  that  impulse,  preventing 
its  prolongation  in  activity,  and  making  a  pause 


248    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

or  eddy,  so  to  speak,  in  the  stream.  This  nega- 
tion of  the  flux  we  call  the  inner  check.  It  is  not 
the  mere  blocking  of  one  impulse  by  another, 
which  is  a  quality  of  the  confusion  of  the  flux 
itself,  but  a  restraint  upon  the  flux  exercised  by 
a  force  contrary  to  it. 

Ill 

In  the  repeated  exercise  of  the  inner  check  we 
are  conscious  of  two  elements  of  our  being  —  the 
inner  check  itself  and  the  stream  of  impulses  — 
as  coexistent  and  cooperative,  yet  essentially 
irreconcilable,  forces.  What,  if  anything,  lies 
behind  the  inner  check,  what  it  is,  why  and  how 
it  acts  or  neglects  to  act,  we  cannot  express  in 
rational  terms.  Of  the  ultimate  source  of  desires 
and  impressions,  and  of  the  relation  of  the  result- 
ing flux  of  impulses  to  the  inner  check  in  that 
union  which  we  call  ourselves,  we  are  darkly 
ignorant.  These  are  the  final  elements  of  self- 
knowledge  —  on  the  one  hand  multiplicity  pf 
impulses,  on  the  other  hand  unity  and  cupidita- 
tum  oblivio,  alta  rerum  qiiies.  Consciousness,  the 
more  deeply  we  look  into  ourselves,  tells  us  that 
we  are  ceaselessly  changing,  yet  tells  us  also 
that  we  are  ever  the  same.  This  dualism  of  con- 
sciousness, it  seems,  is  the  last  irrational  fact,  the 
report  behind  which  we  cannot  go,  the  decision 
against  which  there  is  no  appeal,  the  reality 
which  only  stands  out  the  more  clearly  the  more 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      249 

it  is  questioned.  If  a  man  denies  this  dualism  of 
consciousness  there  is  no  argument  with  him,  but 
a  fundamental  difference  of  intuition  which  will 
follow  into  every  view  of  philosophy  and  crit- 
icism. 

IV 

The  attempt  to  resolve  the  irrational  paradox 
by  asserting  that  there  is  an  absolute  conscious- 
ness which  embraces  the  two  elements  of  a  lower 
consciousness  can  only  fall  into  endless  regres- 
sion. Thus,  let  A  and  B  represent  the  two  ele- 
ments of  consciousness.  If  a  man  asserts  that 
there  is  a  third  element,  C,  which  is  conscious  of 
A  and  B  as  mere  aspects  of  one  and  the  same 
mental  activity,  then  for  the  original  dualism  he 
establishes  a  new  dualism  in  which  C  is  one  ele- 
ment while  A  and  B  together  form  the  other 
element.  And  so  on  without  end.  The  diffi- 
culty arises  here  from  attempting  to  treat  the 
so-called  self-knowledge  of  consciousness  as  if  it 
were  the  same  intellectual  process  as  knowledge 
which  requires  a  subject  and  an  object,  a  knower 
and  a  thing  known,  or,  in  our  mental  life,  a  pre- 
sent and  a  past.  We  do  not  know  the  flux  by  the 
inner  check,  or  the  inner  check  by  the  flux,  or 
either  of  these  by  some  other  element  of  our 
being,  but  we  are  immediately  and  inexplicably 
conscious  of  both  at  once  —  we  are  both  at 
once. """"      ^ 


250    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 


Reason,  which  is  our  instrument  of  analysis 
and  definition,  is  itself  an  organ  of  the  flux.  In 
endeavouring,  therefore,  to  define  the  element 
of  our  being  contrary  to  its  sphere,  it  can  only 
employ  terms  which  express  difference  from  the 
qualities  of  the  flux  and  which  must  end  in  pure 
negation.  Thus,  in  the  language  of  philosophy, 
absolute  unity,  or  sameness,  is  merely  the  com- 
plete negation  of  variety,  and  conveys  no  positive 
meaning;  immutability,  the  negation  of  change; 
rest,  the  negation  of  motion;  eternity,  the  nega- 
tion of  time;  infinity,  the  negation  of  all  our  ex- 
perience. The  error  of  the  reason  is  to  deny  the 
existence  of  this  absolute  element  because  it  must 
be  defined  in  terms  of  negation.  By  the  use  of  the 
term  inner  check,  we  accept  the  inability  of  the 
reason  to  define  positively  this  element  of  our 
being,  but  imply  also  that  it  may  be  the  cause 
of  quite  positive  and  definable  effects  within  the 
'fluxf  '^ 

VI 

As  one  impulse  is  checked,  some  other  impulse 
may  come  to  the  surface  and  may  be  permitted 
to  pass  into  activity.  The  inner  check  has  thus 
the  semblance  of  an  act  of  attention  or  choice. 
Attention,  nevertheless,  must  not  be  confused 
with  the  inner  check,  which  is  essentially,  in  so 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      251 

far  as  it  can  be  expressed  in  rational  terms,  a  pure 
inhibition,  having  the  absence  of  variety  and 
change  which  belongs  only  to  absolute  negation. 
Attention  is  the  name  of  the  immediate  effect  of 
the  inner  check  in  the  positive  sphere  of  activi- 
ties, the  last  point  to  which  rational  analysis  and 
emotional  appeal  can  apply.  There  is  thus  in  the 
admonition  to  attend,  that  is,  deliberately  to 
stay._thje  flux  of  impulses  and  exercise  an  act  of 
choice  in  activity,  an  irreducible  paradox,  similar 
to  the  mystery  in  religion  which  calls  a  man  to 
repent  yet  teaches  that  repentance  is  the  work  of 
divine  grace. 

VII 

Feeling  is  the  consciousness  of  an  increase  or 
decrease  in  the  free  play  of  the  desires. 

VIII 

In  pleasure  we  feel  an  enlargement  of  life. 
Pleasure  has  two  moments :  —  the  coming  together 
of  accordant  impressions  and  desires,  and,  fur- 
ther, the  unobstructed  passage  of  the  resulting 
impulse  into  activity.  In  pain,  using  the  word 
Broadly  as  the  contrary  of  pleasure,  we  feel  a 
diminution  of  life.  Pain  also  has  two  moments :  — 
the  coming  together  of  discordant  impressions 
and  desires,  or  the  obstruction  of  any  impulse 
from  passing  into  activity.  A  detrimental  activ- 
ity may  be  immediately  pleasurable,  yet  will  re- 


252    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

suit  in  pain,  since  its  effect  at  the  last  is  to  react 
in  impressions  that  are  in  disaccord  with  our 
desires. 

IX 

Happiness  is  the  feeling  that  accompanies  the 
governing  of  our  impulses  by  the  inner  check. 
Repentance  and  remorse  are  the  feelings  that 
accompany  the  insufficient  exercise  of  the  inner 
check.  Happiness,  when  it  means  obstruction  to 
a  detrimental  impulse,  may  be  associated  with, 
or  preceded  by,  some  degree  of  pain ;  it  is  asso- 
ciated with  pleasure  when  free  course  is  per- 
mitted to  a  beneficial  impulse.  In  the  end  happi- 
ness and  pleasure  tend  to  concur.  Repentance 
and  remorse  are  transitional  feelings,  the  one 
tending  to  pass  into  happiness,  the  other  into  the 
settled  gloom  of  misery. 

X 

Pleasure  and  pain,  which  belong  entirely  to 
the  flux,  remorse  and  misery,  which  belong  pre- 
dominantly to  the  flux,  bring  with  them  a  sense 
of  our  life  as  diverse  from  other  lives;  these  are 
the  personal  feelings,  and  the  sum,  or  resultant, 
of  them  is  personality.  Happiness  and  repent- 
ance, on  the  contrary,  tend  to  a  sense  of  our  life  as 
free  from  such  isolating  qualities;  these  are  the 
impersonal  feelings,  and  the  sum,  or  resultant,  of 
them  is  the  image  in  the  flux,  as  it  were,  of  the 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      253 

spirit,  or  so-called  higher  Self.  It  is  the  part  of 
wisdom  to  distinguish  between  what  is  personal 
and  wFat Ts  Impersoiiair       "~" 

XI 

The  emotions  are  the  feelings  of  pleasure  and 
pain  modified  by  the  complex  activities  of  the 
mind.  They  are  accompanied  by  instinctive  phy- 
sical motions  and  perturbations,  and  on  examina- 
tion seem  to  be  more  or  less  clearly  localized  in 
the  body.  The  cardinal  emotions  may  be  arranged 
thus  in  the  scale  of  personality:  —  joy  and  grief, 
hope  and  fear,  complacence  and  anger,  love  and 
hatred,  vanity  and  shame,  pride  and  debasement, 
joy  is  the  emotion  that  attends  the  reflexion  on 
the  possession  of  a  particular  pleasure  or  on  the 
cessation  of  a  particular  pain,  grief  the  contrary; 
hope  is  the  expectation  of  joy,  fear  the  contrary; 
complacence  is  the  sense  that  another  person  is 
the  cause  of  joy,  anger  the  contrary;  love  (in  a 
restricted  definition)  is  the  sense  that  another 
^  person  is  the  cause  of  hope,  hatred  the  contrary; 
vanity  is  the  sense  that  another  person  feels  our 
superiority  in  the  particular  emotions,  shame  the 
sense  that  another  person  feels  our  inferiority  in 
the  particular  emotions;  pride  is  the  independent 
sense  of  our  superiority,  debasement  the  inde- 
pendent sense  of  our  inferiority.  Vanity  and 
pride,  sh^me  and  debasement,  are  thus  con- 
nected with  our  personal  feelings  as  a  whole,  and 


254    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

are  the  main  factors  of  personality.  It  needs  often 
the  most  deHcate  judgement  to  discriminate 
between  these  personal  emotions  and  their  im- 
personal counterparts,  to  distinguish  vanity  and 
pride  from  the  self-approval  of  happiness,  shame 
and  debasement  from  the  humility  of  repentance. 
In  common  usage  the  distinction  between  these 
words  is  often  ignored. 

XII 

The  various  aspects  of  mental  activity  we  may, 
without  implication  of  the  meaning  conveyed 
in  the  so-called  facultative  psychology,  designate 
the  faculties  of  memory,  reason,  and  imagination. 
These  faculties  we  can  in  a  way  define  and  dis- 
tinguish, but  their  essential  nature  and  their  re- 
lation to  one  another  are  probably  as  impenetra- 
ble as  self-knowledge  itself.  Every  process  of 
mental  activity  appears  to  implicate  all  the  facul- 
ties together,  but  with  varying  degrees  of  em- 
( phasis.  It  may  be  surmised,  but  only  surmised, 
that  in  some  way  the  faculties  themselves  have 
been  created  by  the  action  of  a  force  within  the 
flux  obedient  to  the  inner  check,  and  that  the 
j  regularity  of  their  function  depends  on  the  ful- 
lness of  the  control  of  this  check. 

XIII 

Memory  is  the  faculty  by  which  we  retain  the 
effects  of  activities  as  the  potential  source  of 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      255 

other  activities.  The  sum  of  these  dormant  activ- 
ities constitutes  experience,  or  the  data  of  life. 

XIV 

The  inner  check  allows  to  memory  the  oppor- 
tunity to  balance  a  present  impulse  with  the  im- 
pulses of  experience.  Thus  a  man  has  a  certain 
impulse  which  results  in  activity.  The  detri- 
mental or  beneficial  effect  of  this  activity  remains 
dormant  in  experience.  If,  when  a  similar  impulse 
arises  within  him,  he  attends  and  opposes  a  mo- 
mentary check  to  the  passing  of  this  impulse  into 
activity,  the  memory  of  the  former  effect  may 
produce  a  confirming  or  a  contradictory  impulse. 
In  this  way  beneficial  impulses  are  strengthened, 
detrimental  impulses  are  weakened.  It  is  prob- 
able that  the  whole  of  life  is  in  some  manner 
retained  passively  in  the  memory  of  every  man. 
But  the  readiness  of  memory  in  choosing  and 
awakening  impulses  from  its  supply  varies  with 
individual  men.  Not  the  scope  only,  but  the  se-  ! 
lective  activity  of  memory  in  response  to  the  op-  / 
portunities  afforded  by  the  inner  check,  measures 
the  fulness  and  richness  of  life. 

XV 

Tradition  is  the  experience  of  society.  It  is 
stored  up  for  use  by  what  may  be  called  the  ob- 
jective memory.  The  chief  function  of  education 


256     THE   DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

is  to  transfer  the  wealth  of  a  selective  tradition 
from  society  to  the  individual. 

XVI 

By  memory  the  diversity  of  the  flux  becomes 
to  us  succession  in  time.  The  concrete  emotion  of 
passing  time  seems  to  spring  from  a  divergence 
between  the  inner  and  the  outer  flux;  and  there  is 
a  regular  association  of  this  emotion  with  person- 
ality. In  pain,  when  the  impressions  intrude 
harshly  upon  us,  we  feel  strongly  both  our  person- 
ality and  the  lapse  of  time.  In  pleasure,  when  our 
portion  of  the  flux  is  dominant,  personality  is 
strong,  but  we  are  scarcely  aware  of  time  except 
as  pleasure  is  interrupted  by  fear  for  its  continu- 
ance. In  happiness,  as  personality  tends  to  be 
absorbed  in  the  consciousness  of  the  higher  Self, 
so  the  sense  of  time  is  lost  in  a  consciousness  of 
duration  without  succession  which  is  akin  at  once 
to  time  and  timelessness.  The  abstract  activity 
of  the  faculty  of  memory  gives  us  the  conception 
of  pure  time. 

XVII 

Reason  is  the  faculty  of  discretion  by  which  we 
perceive  sameness  and  difference.  Its  effect  is  to 
break  up  the  flowing  datum  of  experience  into 
units.  By  the  perception  of  sameness  it  combines 
these  units  in  larger  and  more  comprehensive 
conceptions;  by  the  perception  of  difference  in 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      257 

smaller  and  less  comprehensive  conceptions.  Its 
law  is  the  exclusion  of  contradictories;  that  is  to 
say,  it  holds  that  if  two  things  are  totally  differ- 
ent they  can  have  no  bond  of  sameness.  It  may 
be  designated  in  accordance  with  the  material  in 
which  it  works  as  objective  or  subjective. 

XVIII 

Ima^n^ion  is  the  faculty  which  sensualizes 
the  data  of_experience  apart  from  ourselves  as 
separate  existences.  It  runs  parallel  with  the 
reason,  and  like  the  reason  may  be  designated  in 
accordance  with  the  material  in  which  it  works  as 
objective  or  subjective. 

XIX 

The  objective  reason  deals,  not  with  the  whole 
field  of  experience,  but  with  the  impulses  that 
arise  under  the  immediate  impact  of  impressions 
from  the  outer  world,  by  its  perception  of  same- 
ness and  diflference  conceiving  this  material  as 
more  or  less  comprehensive  units.  The  objective 
imagination  projects  this  material  into  the  void 
as  discrete  phenomena.  These  phenomena  are 
seemingly,  but  not  really,  made  up  of  the  pure 
matter  of  impressions,  unconnected  with  our  de- 
sires; of  the  actual  outer  world  from  which  our 
impressions  flow  we  can  have  no  unmixed  know- 
ledge. 


258    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

XX 

By  the  abstract  activity  of  the  objective  reason 
we  get  the  conception  of  number.  By  the  object- 
ive imagination  we  get  the  conception  of  pure 
space.  The  simultaneous  activity  of  reason  and 
imagination  gives  us  the  conception  of  specific 
extension.  Time  and  extension  together  give  us 
the  conception  of  pure  motion.  The  formulation 
of  these  abstract  conceptions  is  pure  mathemat- 
ics. 

XXI 

The  sum  of  phenomena  is  nature.  As  the  ma- 
terial out  of  which  phenomena  are  formed  reaches 
the  faculties  through  the  various  senses,  or 
organs  of  perception,  our  knowledge  of  nature 
is  conditioned  by  the  activity  of  these  bodily 
organs  and  is  subject  to  distortion  by  their  irreg- 
ular activity.  Knowledge  of  a  particular  phe- 
nomenon is  reckoned  accurate  in  so  far  as  it  fits  in 
with  our  knowledge  of  other  phenomena,  and 
in  so  far  as  this  general  knowledge  fits  in  with 
the  knowledge  reported  by  other  persons. 

XXII 

Science,  primarily,  is  the  systematic  accumu- 
lation of  accurate  knowledge.  Secondarily,  it  is 
the  endeavour  to  express  the  conditioned  know- 
ledge of  the  senses  in  the  abstract  conceptions  of 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      259 

the  faculties.  There  is  a  regular  gradation  of  the 
sciences  as  they  deal  with  the  more  complicated 
aspects  of  experience,  and  the  margin  of  facts 
unamenable  to  abstract  law  increases  with  the 
complexity  of  the  material.  Each  science,  there- 
fore, attempts  to  find  the  expression  of  its  law 
in  terms  of  the  simpler  science  below  it.  Thus, 
by  a  series  of  approximations,  history  as  a  science 
tries  to  find  its  law  in  sociology,  sociology  in  psy- 
chology, psychology  in  biology,  biology  in  chem- 
istry, chemistry  in  physics.  Physics  reduces  phe- 
nomena to  the  simplest  and  most  constant  form 
of  perception,  considering  them  as  concrete  ex- 
tension (mass)  and  concrete  motion  (motion,  as 
change  of  mass  in  position).  In  attempting  to 
express  these  physical  perceptions  in  the  abstract 
formulae  of  mathematics  there  may  be  conven- 
ience, but  there  is  no  real  addition  to  scientific 
knowledge.  Between  mathematics  and  physics 
stands  the  concrete  reality  of  energy  or  the  im- 
pact of  the  impressions  as  received  through  the 
senses.  We  have  then  this  baffling  paradox: 
there  is  no  pure  science  but  mathematics,  and 
mathematics  is  not  a  science  since  it  has  no 
content  of  knowledge. 

XXIII 

Whatever  is  recognized  as  remaining  in  the  self 
after  the  separation  of  the  phenomena  of  nature 
is  called  the  soul.    The  body  belongs  to  nature, 


26o    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

but  it  is  distinguished  by  its  special  association 
wiith  an  individual  soul.  The  relation  of  cor- 
poreal to  mental  activity  as  cause,  consequence, 
or  parallel  existence  is  profoundly  obscure.  The 
soul  and  the  body  form  together  what  we  call  our 
organization.  Perception  of  this  external  dual- 
ism of  soul  and  body  often  tends  to  supplant  that 
of  the  true  inner  dualism  of  consciousness.  It 
may  have  value  as  a  symbolic  expression  of  the 
inner  dualism,  in  so  far  as  the  body  by  means  of 
the  organs  of  perception  is  the  instrument  by 
which  the  inner  flux  and  the  outer  flux  are  united 
to  form  our  impulsive  life,  and  is  thus  set  apart 
from  the  inner  check.  The  word  nature  may  be 
applied  specifically  to  the  sum  of  phenomena 
exclusive  of  the  living  body  of  the  man  himself. 

XXIV 

The  subjective  reason  deals  with  the  whole  ma- 
terial of  experience,  including  both  the  immediate 
impulses  and  their  train  of  reactions  in  our  men- 
tal life.  Its  material  is  thus  dominated  not  by 
outer  impressions,  as  is  the  material  out  of  which 
natural  phenomena  are  formed,  but  by  inner 
desires.  By  its  means  we  conceive  our  mental 
activities  as  discrete  quantities  and  the  mind 
itself  as  a  discrete  unit.  The  abstract  activity 
of  the  subjective  reason  gives  us  the  principles  of 
logic.  The  subjective  imagination  is  the  use 
of  the  faculty  by  which  we  project  our  complex 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      261 

inner  experience  into  nature  as  existences  apart 
from  the  soul.  The  abstract  activity  of  the  sub- 
jective imagination  gives  us  the  idea  of  creation. 

XXV 

When  by  the  objective  imagination  nature  has 
been  set  apart  from  ourselves,  the  subjective  im- 
agination may  intervene  and  endow  these  phe- 
nomena with  the  activities  of  our  inner  Hfe.  This 
is  the  pathetic  fallacy,  which  makes  nature  to  cor- 
respond to  our  personal  emotions.  It  may  take 
the  form  of  an  apparent  absorption  of  the  soul  in 
nature  or  of  an  apparent  absorption  of  nature 
in  the  soul.  Then  nature  seems  to  smile  or  weep 
with  us,  or  by  a  reversal  of  feeling  to  show  a  con- 
trary face. 
'  XXVI 

When  the  phenomena  of  nature  appear  to  be 
under  the  control  of  a  force  corresponding  to  the 
inner  check,  they  are  said,  in  a  general  way,  to  be 
beautiful.  More  specifically  beauty  is  this  par- 
ticular sense  of  unity  in  diversity  as  manifested 
l^y  design,  form,  harmony,  clear  and  regular  tran- 
sition, relation  of  parts.  It  is  commonly  mingled 
with  other  perceptions  of  the  one  in  the  many  — 
such  as  sublimity,  grandeur,  charm,  grace  —  more 
or  less  closely  related  or  subordinate  to  it.  Thus 
the  very  stability  of  the  mountains  upreared 
amidst  the  shifting  panorama  of  the  atmo- 
sphere, the  endurance  of  great  waters  in  their 


262     THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

everlasting  fluctuations,  suggest  the  indwelling 
of  some,  eternal  word  of  command.  The  quiet 
gleam  of  light,  the  purity  of  colours,  the  melody 
of  sound,  hint  at  some  deep-hidden  principle  of 
joy.  The  brave  persistence  of  growing  things,  the 
stealthy  instincts  of  wild  life,  proclaim  the  im- 
manence of  some  master  virtue.  This  formative 
power  within  phenomena  we  often  think  of  as 
Nature  personified. 

XXVII 

The  consolation  of  nature  is  an  impersonal  emo- 
tion arising  from  the  confirmation  of  our  inner 
consciousness  of  dualism ;  for  beauty  is,  as  it  were, 
a  visible  image  of  the  possible  happiness  of  the 
soul.  This  consolation  is  peculiarly  liable  to  suf- 
fer perversion  from  the  pathetic  fallacy  and  from 
the  usurpations  of  reason.  Jt  is  after  all  but  an 
illusion  that  trembles  at  the  touch  of  analysis. 
Hence  the  sense  of  uneasiness  that  often  accom- 
panies the  perception  of  beauty,  and  the  diffi- 
culty of  reconciling  ethics  and  aesthetics. 

O  nimium  caelo  et  pelago  confise  sereno! 

XXVIII 

In  the  end,  when  the  great  griefs  of  life  attack 
us,  there  has  always  been,  and  is,  one  only  con- 
solation unmixed  with  shame  and  debasement. 
Time  may  deaden  and  mechanical  immersion  in 
the  flux  may  conceal  the  cause_of_£riefj  but  the 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      263 

true  liberation  comes  only  with  the  knowledge  of 
the  universality  of  evil  and  pain  in  human  des- 
tiny, and  with  the  consciousness  that  something 
jvithin  us  stands  apart  from  the  everlasting  flux 
^nd  frorn  our  passions  which  also  belong^to  the 
flux. 

XXIX 

Art  is  the  attempt,  by  means  of  the  subjective 
imagination,  to  establish  the  experience  of  the 
individual  in  tradition.  Serious  art  is  thus  al- 
most necessarily  concerned  with  the  past  and 
with  ambitions  of  the  future.  In  so  far  as  it  dea^ 
with  beauty,  it  is  an  attempt  to  adapt  the  beauty 
of  nature  as  seen  through  the  objective  imagina- 
tion to  the  demands  of  the  subjective  imagination. 
It  differs  from  the  pathetic  fallacy  by  implying  a 
distinct  and  more  or  less  revocable  addition  to 
nature  rather  than  a  fusion  of  nature  and  the 
soul. 

XXX 

The  various  arts  are  limited  to  specific  fields  of 
experience  in  accordance  with  the  medium  in 
which  they  work,  and  they  rise  in  dignity  as  the 
sense  to  which  they  are  directed  has  less  of  the 
flux  and  more  of  mental  stability  in  its  activity. 
Thus,  they  may  be  arranged  in  a  scale  of  honour 
as  they  act  through  the  medium  of  taste  and 
odour,  sound,  colour  and  line,  form.    For  the 


264    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

same  reason  their  emotional  appeal  is  more  per- 
sonal as  they  descend  in  this  scale,  more  im- 
personal as  they  ascend.  The  so-called  confusion 
of  the  genres,  by  obscuring  distinctions,  intro- 
duces an  additional  and  unnecessary  element  of 
instability  in  the  medium  employed.  Its  effect, 
therefore,  is  to  enhance  the  merely  personal  ap- 
peal of  an  art  and  to  lower  its  dignity  and  imper- 
sonal appeal. 

XXXI 

Language  is  the  medium  by  which  we  under- 
take to  convey  experience  completely  and  directly 
rather  than  as  divided  and  refracted  by  a  particu- 
lar organ  of  perception ;  it  may  be  less  intense  and 
precise  than  the  various  senses  in  their  proper 
fields,  but  is  deeper  and  broader  than  any  one  of 
them.  The  creative  use  of  language,  or  literature, 
is  thus  of  the  arts,  but  separated  from  them  by  its 
scope,  seeming  by  its  universality  to  be  more 
essentially  a  function  of  life.  Rhythm  lends  to 
language  something  of  the  sense  quality  of  music, 
and  relates  poetry  more  closely  to  the  specific  arts 
while  not  depriving  it  entirely  of  the  free  range  of 
literature. 

XXXII 

Works  of  art  are  varied  in  so  far  as  they  are 
created  by  the  imagination  out  of  the  material  of 
the  flux,  and  substantially  they  depend  on  the 
richness  of  the  artist's  experience.  Formally  they 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      265 

rise  to  a  common  standard  of  excellence  in  so  far 
as  the  imagination  of  the  artist  is  subject  to  the 
control  of  the  unvaried '  inner  check.  So,  too, 
taste,  or  the  appreciation  of  art,  passes  from  the 
impressionistic  whim  of  the  individual  and  from 
the  larger  convention  of  an  age  or  a  people  to  a 
universal  canon  just  to  the  degree  that  it  is  regu- 
lated by  the  inner  check.  Criticism  is  thus  not 
left  to  waver  without  a  fixed  criterion ;  and  in  the 
understanding  of  dualism  it  possesses  further  a 
key  to  the  main  divergences  of  thought  and  ac- 
tion, and  a  constant  norm  of  classification. 

XXXIII 

Talent  is  measured  by  a  man's  ability  to  give 
expression  to  the  material  of  experience.  Genius, 
or  inspiration,  is  measured  by  the  degree  to 
which  the  immediate  consciousness  of  dualism 
enters  into  expression.  Talent  and  genius  in  their 
highest  stages  will  coincide,  but  in  their  lower 
stages  they  may  exist  together  in  varying  pro- 
portions. 

XXXIV 

Hallucination  comes  when  we  seem  to  perceive 
the  images  of  the  subjective  imagination  as  inde- 
pendent entities  endowed  with  powers  which  are 
not  subject  to  our  control  and  which  may  work 
upon  the  soul.  Hallucination  is  to  the  subjective 
imagination  that  which  the  pathetic  fallacy  is  to 
the  objective  imagination. 


266    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

XXXV 

Reason  may  be  mistaken  in  its  distinctions  and 
the  imagination  may  wander  into  fallacy  and 
hallucination,  but  the  sure  penalties  of  practice 
prevent  them  from  going  far  astray  in  the  normal 
man.  And,  though  they  do  not,  even  if  rightly 
exercised,  tell  us  the  essential  reality  of  the  outer 
world  and  of  the  soul,  yet  when  they  deal  with  the 
actual  material  of  experience  they  make  the  real- 
ness  of  our  own  life.  There  is,  however,  another 
so-called  metaphysical  activity  of  these  faculties, 
by  which,  transcending  their  proper  function, 
they  lead  to  absolute  error  and  deception.  When, 
on  the  one  hand,  they  usurp  the  function  of  the 
organs  of  perception  and  undertake  to  give  per- 
ceptive realness  to  abstract  conceptions  of  time, 
number,  and  space,  extension  and  motion,  —  that 
is  to  say,  when  they  conceive  a  relationship 
among  certain  phenomena  and  then  proceed  to 
set  forth  this  relationship  in  the  language  of  the 
senses,  they  fall  into  hypothetical  metaphysics, 
or  pseudo-science.  They  fall  into  pure  meta- 
physics, or  ontology,  when,  on  the  other  hand, 
they  usurp  the  function  of  consciousness  and 
undertake  to  explain  the  ultimate  reaUty  of  things 
Ijy  abstract  conceptions.  Metaphysics,  in  general, 
may  thus  be  defined  as  an  attempt~tb  assume 
essential  authority  for  the  faculties. 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      267 

XXXVI 

We  are  conscious  of  our  self  as  both  the  inner 
check  and  the  flux,  one  and  many,  the  same  and 
different.  Reason  denies  this  contradictory  dual- 
ism, and,  starting  with  an  elimination  of  one  ele- 
ment of  consciousness,  proceeds,  with  the  imag- 
ination, to  build  up  a  theory  of  life  and  the  world 
based  on  the  other  element  of  consciousness. 
Thus  two  schools  of  pure  metaphysics,  under  var- 
ious names  and  disguises,  have  always  existed  side 
by  side  in  irreconcilable  hostility  —  on  this  side  ,. 
the  systems  which  start  from  absolute  unity,  sta-  /^' 
bility,  rest,  the  universalia  ante  rem  ;  on  the  other 
side  the  systems  of  absolute  diversity ,  flux,  change, 
the  universalia  post  rem.  It  is  no  contraversion  of 
this  fact  that  the  same  metaphysician  may  some- 
times pass  confusedly  from  one  to  the  other  school. 
Such  a  confusion  will  be  found  to  underlie  the 
metaphysics  of  most  of  those  who  maintain  the 
middle  ground  of  universalia  in  rebus. 

XXXVII 

In  this  persistent  opposition  of  the  two  schools 
of  pure  metaphysics,  we  have  at  once  confirma- 
tion of  the  dualism  of  consciousness  and  evidence 
that  no  metaphysical  theory  will  ever  unriddle 
the  secret  of  the  world.  But  neither  should  it  be 
forgotten  that,  mixed  up  with  the  logomachy 
of  the  greater  metaphysicians,  there  has  always 


268    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

been  more  or  less  of  true  insight,  and  that  their 
power  as  guides  and  consolers  of  mankind  has 
been  proportionate  to  their  immediate  vision  of 
the  truth.  Plato  is  at  times  merely  the  perplex- 
ing metaphysician;  oftener  he  speaks  from  the 
depth  of  unexampled  self-knowledge.  All  that 
is  essential  to  the  dualistic  philosophy  may  be 
gathered  from  his  dialogues,  as  hints  and  frag- 
ments of  it  may  be  found  scattered  through  in- 
numerable other  writers,  especially  the  inspired 
poets  and  philosophers  of  life. 

XXXVIII 

The  modern  metaphysic  of  the  one  is  idealism. 
Its  error  is  double,  in  so  far  as  it  begins  with 
denying  the  substantive  reality  of  the  flux,  and 
then  proceeds  to  treat  the  absolute  unity  of  the 
inner  check  as  if  this  were  the  same  thing  as  the 
rationally  conceived  and  relative  unity  of  the  flux 
which  it  has  denied. 

XXXIX 

The  metaphysic  of  the  many  has  various  forms 
and  names.  Its  most  seductive  form  to-day  is 
that  way  of  viewing  life  which  is  commonly  called 
pragmatic.  The  followers  of  pragmatism,  what- 
ever their  protestations  may  be,  all  agree  in  tak- 
ing the  flux  as  the  whole  of  consciousness,  and  in 
then  staying  the  reason  at  this  point  and  reject- 
ing its  further  function  of  discretion  and  combin- 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      269 

ation.  They  deny  the  superrational  intuition  of 
the  absolute  and  hold  fast  to  the  infrarational 
intuition  of  the  impulses  as  a  continuous  stream 
in  time.  Truth  is  to  them  whatever  persists  the 
longest  in  the  unchecked  indiscrete  experience 
of  life.  Their  theory,  as  it  is  half  rational  and 
half  intuitional,  is  unstable  and  elusive.  Its 
result  is  to  dissolve  attention  and  to  discredit 
discipline. 

if  J  XL 

Science,  when  it  passes  beyond  the  field  of 
positive  observation  and  metaphysical  hypothe- 
sis into  pure  metaphysics,  is  an  attempt  to  formu- 
late a  changeless  law  of  change,  to  find  some 
absolute  cause  of  unity  or  development  within 
the  flux  of  nature  without  projecting  into  nature 
the  equivalent  of  the  inner  check.  Chemical 
atoms,  vortices,  phlogiston,  the  corpuscular  the- 
ory of  light,  luminiferous  ether,  are  examples  of 
science  in  the  hypothetical  stage.  The  concep- 
tion of^  j)erfect  whole  made  up  of  an  infinite 
number  of  imperfect  parts,  the  conception  of 
probability  and  survival  as  a  principle  of  or- 
ganization, are  examples  of  science  in  transition 
from  the  hypothetical  to  the  ontological  stage. 
The  deterministic  conception  of  the  world  as 
produced  by  an  endless  chain  of  mechanical 
causes  and  effects,  the  vitalistic  conception  of 
the  world  as  produced  by  an  absolute  and  in- 


^270    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

determinate  self-evolution  or  self -creation,  are 
examples  of  science  in  the  ontological  stage. 

XLI 

Rationalism  is  the  attempt  to  erect  reason 
into  an  independent  power  within  the  soul 
taking  the  place  of  the  inner  check.  The  union 
of  science  and  rationalism,  that  is  to  say,  the 
reassumption  of  nature  and  the  soul  under  the 
same  law,  gives  the  false  philosophy  of  natural- 
ism. The  two  great  schools  of  naturalism  in 
antiquity  —  and  their  votaries  under  various 
^'  names  are  still  common  —  were  the  Epicurean 
which  divided  this  universal  flux  into  self-moving 
atoms,  and  the  Stoic  which  regarded  it  as  a  con- 
tinuous self-governing  fluid.  Scientific  monism  is 
a  kind  of  sterile  hybrid  from  the  union  of  natural- 
ism and  idealism.    It  need   be  named,   and  no 

more. 

XLI  I 

All  these  systems  of  the  flux  —  pragmatism, 
science,  rationalism,  naturalism  —  have  a  way 
of  merging  into  one  another,  and  of  existing  to- 
gether simultaneously  in  the  same  mind.  In  this 
indiscriminate  sense  they  pass  under  the  general 
name  of  naturalism. 

XLIII 

Romanticism  is  a  radical  confusion  of  the  unlim- 
ited desires  and  the  infinite  inner  check.    In  its 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      271 

essential  manifestation  it  is  thus  a  morbid  and 
restless  intensification  of  the  personal  emotions. 
WEen  the  artistic  imagination  attempts  to  em- 
Dody  this  blending  of  the  unlimited  and  the  in- 
finite, we  have  the  romantic  strangeness  and 
vagueness,  often  accompanied  with  a  peculiarly 

"troubled  sense  of  beauty.  In  classical  art  the 
finite  and  the  infinite  are  projected  together,  but 
without  confusion.  In  so  far  as  romanticism  turns 
to  emotion  away  from  reason  it  is  opposed  to 
science  and  rationalism;  in  so  far  as  it  obscures 
the  true  infinite  it  falls  with  them  under  natural- 
ism.   Its  affiliation  is  with   the  pragmatic  flux 

^and  the  elan  vital. 

XLIV 

Thus,  by  the  failure  to  restrain  the  faculties  to 
their  proper  task  of  developing  experience,  man  is 
prone  to  create  about  himself  a  world  of  error  and 
deception  —  of  error  in  so  far  as  under  the  sway 
of  reason  he  introduces  unmeaning  abstractions 
and  unifications  into  the  soul,  of  deception  in  so 
far  as  he  imagines  a  world  corresponding  to  this 
usurpation  of  reason. 

y^  XLV 

yrhe  safeguard  against^  error  and  jleception  is 

^elf-knowledge.  As  self-knowledge  maintains  a 
clear  and  unfailing  consciousness  of  dualism,  it  is 
called  insight ;  as  it  denies  the  right  of  the  facul- 


? 


272    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

ties  to  supplant  this  dualism  by  their  own  ab- 
stractions and  combinations,  it  is  called  scepti- 
cism. Insight  and  scepticism  are  the  two  arms, 
the  positive  and  negative  aspects,  so  to  speak,  of 
truth.  Insight  includes  at  once  both  the  higher, 
or  superrational,  intuition  which  is  immediately 
conscious  of  the  inner  check,  and  the  lower,  or 
infrarational,  intuition  which  is  immediately  con- 
scious of  the  flux  of  impulses. 

XLVI 

Insight  and  scepticism  are  not  to  be  identified 
with  doubt,  which  is  a  mere  lethargy  of  the  facul- 
ties and  may  be  the  mother  of  wandering  and 
feeble  errors  and  deceptions.  True  insight  and 
scepticism  are  extremely  difficult  to  maintain, 
and  the  true  seers  and  sceptics  are  correspond- 
ingly rare.  In  all  the  business  of  life  we  are  aided 
by  the  proper  discriminations  of  the  reason  and 
the  proper  creations  of  the  imagination,  and  this 
benefit  acts  as  a  continual  assault  upon  the  re- 
straining power.  Their  insinuations  of  self-com- 
petence are  endlessly  varied  and  perilous. 

XLVII 

Self-knowledge  grows  with  the  exercise  of  the 
inner  check,  and  as  the  inner  check  has  to  do  with 
impulses  which  tend  both  to  mental  and  to  phys- 
ical activities,  self-knowledge  results  in  the  one 
sphere  in  truth  and  in  the  other  sphere  in  morali_ty. 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      273 

The  life  of  truth  is  philosophy,  the  life  of  moral- 
ity is  health  {<T(D(f>po(Tvvr]) .  Philosophy  and  moral 
Health  may  not  wholly  coincide  in  a  man's  life, 
but  each  is  the  natural  reinforcement  of  the  other, 
and  in  their  perfection  they  cannot  exist  apart. 

XLVIII 

It  does  not  follow,  because  the  metaphysical  use 
of  the  reason  is  essentially  erroneous,  that  reason 
has  no  proper  function  in  philosophy.  In  discrim- 
inating the  effects  of  the  inner  check  in  the  sphere 
of  the  flux,  reason  is  at  work  from  the  first  act  of 
attention  to  the  last  trait  of  character.  It  should 
be  observed  also  that  the  word  reason,  especially 
in  the  Platonic  dialectic,  has  often  been  used  as 
synonymous  with  superrational  intuition. 

XLIX 

The  sum  of  a  man's  desires  constitutes  his 
temperament.  His  disposition  is  that  whole  field 
of  impulses  which  is  created  by  the  coming 
together  of  his  temperament  and  the  stream  of 
outer  impressions. 

L 

If  an  impulse  is  checked,  a  similar  recurring 
impulse  is  easier  to  check;  if  unchecked,  the  con- 
trary is  true.  Thus,  by  attention  and  inattention, 
the  disposition  of  a  man  takes  on  a  pattern  of 
strength  and  weakness  which  we  call  habits.  We 


274    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

speak  also  of  the  habit  of  attention,  when  the 
habits  result  from  attention;  and  of  the  habit  of 
inattention,  when  the  habits  result  from  inatten- 
tion. A  series  of  impulses  directed  towards  a  par- 
ticular object  constitutes  what  is  called  desire, 
in  the  common,  or  secondary,  use  of  the  word. 
Desire,  in  this  sense  of  the  word,  may  satisfy 
itself  in  mental  images  of  possession,  or  may  pass 
into  physical  activities  for  the  purpose  of  actual 
possession. 

LI 

When  a  man  acts  under  the  habit  of  attention, 
there  is  an  elimination  of  disturbing  and  thwarting 
impulses,  and  he  is  enabled  to  display  a  direct 
and  clear  energy  which  we  call  the  will.  This  pos- 
itive force  of  the  will,  which  is  a  mode  of  activity 
and  belongs  to  the  flux,  is  easily  mistaken  for  the 
inner  check,  or  original  element  of  inhibition,  of 
which  it  is  the  outcome.  Since  the  will  is  the  re- 
sult of  eliminating  or  refraining  detrimental  irii- 
pulses,  it  may,  by  an  easy  transference  of  lan- 
guage, be  called  the  will  to  refrain.  By  this  name 
it  is  better  distinguished  from  the  mere  vehemence 
of  desire. 

LIT 

A  man  of  character  is  one  in  whom  a  vigorous 
disposition  is  continuously  controlled  by  the 
habit  of  attention,  or  the  will  to  refrain.  As  char- 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      275 

acter  develops,  the  disposition  takes  on  a  more 
regular  pattern ;  the  impulses  become  harmonious 
as  if  arranged  upon  a  centre,  and  display  a  kind  of 
unity  in  multiplicity.  The  outcome  in  conduct  is 
consistency,  self-direction,  balance  of  faculties, 
efficiency,  moral  health,  happiness.  At  its  highest 
development  the  will  would  appear  to  act  auto- 
matically, as  if  the  troublesome  choice  among 
heterogeneous  impulses  had  been  surmounted. 
The  man  would  no  longer  be  subject  to  the  alter- 
nations of  happiness  and  misery,  but  would  rise 
to  a  state  of  equable  activity  in  repose  which  we 
call  peace.  Yet  withal  it  must  be  that  life  in  its 
perfection  would  leave  something  wanting  to  the 
soul;  some  feeling  would  still  pierce  through  to 
remind  us  that  happiness  in  all  its  stages  is  at 
best  but  a  negation  of  the  great  angry  flux;  we 
know  even  more  clearly  as  we  grow  in  self-con- 
trol that  the  peace  of  this  life  is  but  the  shadow 
and  not  the  substance.  Remorse  and  misery  we 
can  certainly  outgrow,  pain  perhaps;  but  there 
remains  the  divine  discontent. 

LIII 

In  so  far  as  the  inner  check  is  not  exercised, 
and  in  so  far  as  a  man  acts  from  the  unbalanced 
impulses  of  the  moment,  his  disposition  is  said  to 
be  impulsive.  The  conduct  of  such  a  man  tends 
to  fall  into  inconsistency,  dispersion,  discord  of 
/acuities,  inefficiency,  misery.    This,  in  varying 


276    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

degrees,  is  the  state  of  the  multitude.  The  con- 
summation of  such  a  state  would  be  the  very 
contrary  of  £eace,  which  is  des£air. 

LIV 

In  some  men  the  desires  flow  of  themselves 
strongly  in  a  particular  direction.  If  the  will  to 
refrain  is  correspondingly  weak  and  the  impulses 
are  permitted  to  generate  unrestrained  habits, 
such  men  acquire  a  violence  of  disposition,  or 
egotism.  As  the  man  of  character  and  the  egotist 
both  display  a  certain  stable  pattern  of  habits, 
they  present  superficially  a  similar  appearance. 
But  in  fact  they  are  essentially  the  opposite  of 
each  other ;  in  practice  it  is  seldom  difficult  to  dis- 
tinguish immediately  between  them,  and  by  fam- 
iliarity the  dilTerence  comes  out  stronger.  Clea.r-^ 
ness  of  aim  is  not  the  same  as  imperious  need; 
inner  harmony  is  not  the  same  as  the  consistency 
of  a  harsh  one-sidedness ;  strength  is  not  the  same 
as  obstinacy;  peace  is  not  the  same  as  a  sullen 
pride.  In  the  end  the  egotist  is  likely  to  fall  into 
fatal  self-contradictions  and  misery. 

LV 

The  morality  or  immorality  of  an  agent  is  de- 
termined by  the  exercise  or  quiescence  of  the  inner 
check.  The  rightness  or  wrongness,  virtue  or 
vice,  of  a  particular  act  is  determined  by  the  final 
result  in  pleasure  or  pain  to  the  agent  as  an  indi- 


DEFINITIONS    OF   DUALISM      277 

vidual  existing  amid  certain  circumstances — that 
is  to  say,  by  the  harmonious  increase  of  life  or  the 
contrary.  If  the  inner  check  permits  full  attention 
on  the  part  of  the  agent,  he  will  to  the  best  of  his 
experience  choose  the  act  which  shall  result  fin- 
ally in  pleasure,  and  which  is  therefore  right  and 
virtuous.  At  any  moment,  even  with  full  atten- 
tion, he  may  be  mistaken  in  his  opinion  and  thus 
be  moral  while  acting  wrongly  and  viciously;  but 
in  the  long  run  virtue  and  morality  tend  to  coin- 
cide, just  as  pleasure  and  happiness  tend  to  coiji_- 
cideTtHey  would  coincide  immediately  and  abso- 
lutely were  the  world  itself  totally  moral.  On  the 
other  hand,  a  man  may  have  large  experience  of 
virtue  and  vice  and  of  their  consequences,  yet  at 
any  moment,  without  the  pause  of  attention 
(more  or  less  painful  and  protracted  according 
to  his  disposition),  may  be  led  to  act  contrary  to 
his  own  good  —  video  meliora  proboque,  deteriora 
sequor.  His  error  is  due  to  the  force  of  some 
insurgent  desire,  overwhelming  temporarily  the 
realization  of  past  and  future,  or  flattering  him 
with  sly  insinuations  that  a  vice  which  is  harm- 
ful to  others  may  be  innocent  to  himself. 

LVI 

The  discriminating  power  of  reason  should 
seem  to  be  predominant  in  judging  the  ultimate 
outcome  of  pleasure  and  pain  resultant  upon  a 
particular  act ;  but  the  faculties  of  memory  and 


278    THE    DRIFT    OF    ROMANTICISM 

imagination  are  also  required,  memory  in  supply- 
ing the  material  of  judgement,  and  imagination  in 
lending  cogent  realness  to  judgement.  In  the  in- 
sufficiency of  individual  experience  a  man  must 
be  largely  guided  by  the  experience  of  society  as 
expressed  in  precepts.  The  most  useful  summary 
of  experience  is  the  general  rule  that  virtue  is  a 
mean  lying  between  the  two  extremes  of  vice. 
Thus,  temperance  is  the  mean  lying  between  in- 
temperance, which  is  an  excess  in  the  indulgence 
of  physical  pleasure,  and  austerity,  which  is  a 
defect  in  such  indulgence.  Courage  is  the  mean 
lying  between  rashness,  which  is  an  excess  of 
desire  to  venture  or  attack,  and  cowardice,  which 
is  a  defect  of  such  desire.  And  so  with  regard  to 
the  other  virtues  and  vices.  Essentially,  how- 
ever, the  vice  of  defect  is  the  excess  of  a  contrary 
desire.  Thus,  austerity,  though  in  relation  to 
temperance  appearing  a  defect,  is  in  itself  an  ex- 
cess of  the  kind  of  desire  which  creates  pride ;  and 
cowardice,  in  like  manner,  is  in  itself  an  excess  of 
desire  to  save  one's  life.  The  real  defect  does  not 
show  itself  in  the  vices,  properly  speaking,  but  in 
the  lack  of  elevation,  the  petty  faults,  the  ignoble 
hesitations,  the  tepid  dulness,  which  form  the 
vast  background  of  life.  This  is  meanness  as  con- 
trasted with  the  golden  mean,  feebleness  of  tem- 
perament as  contrasted  with  the  control  of  the 
inner  check. 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      279 

LVII 

To  sum  up  the  various  aspects  of  a  man's  self: 
—  The  soul  is  the  total  source  of  individuality, 
including,  properly  speaking,  the  inner  check 
and  the  desires,  and  excluding  the  impressions 
derived  through  the  body.  Temperament  is  the 
part  of  the  soul  which  belongs  to  the  flux ;  the  soul, 
unless  it  is  conceived  as  including  the  inner  check, 
is  indistinguishable  from  the  temperament.  Soul 
and  temperament  cannot  be  conceived  as  actually 
existing  in  time  yet  apart  from  a  body.  Disposi- 
tion is  temperament  as  it  works  out  in  conjunc- 
tion with  the  body ;  it  is  the  energy,  so  to  speak,  of 
our  organization.  Impulsiveness  is  a  weak  dis- 
position uncontrolled  by  the  inner  check.  Egotism 
is  a  strong  disposition  uncontrolled  by  the  inner 
check.  Character  is  disposition  controlled  by  the 
inner  check.  Personality  is  the  emotional  sense 
of  our  disposition  as  an  individual  fact  different 
from  other  dispositions. 

LVII  I 

As  the  common  disposition  of  mankind  is  lack- 
ing in  character,  the  will  to  refrain  needs  to  be, 
and  largely  is,  reinforced  from  without  by  the  re- 
straining influence  of  public  opinion,  fear  of  pun- 
ishment, edu£ation,  and  mythology.  The  proper 
effect  of  this  external  check  is  a  discipline  which 
produces  healthy  instincts  capable,  under  ordin- 


28o    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

ary  circumstances,  of  taking  the  place  of  charac- 
ter. It  must  be  added  that  the  external  check, 
if  carried  to  a  point  where  it  crushes  instead  of 
regulating  the  disposition ,  may  be  debilitating  and 
dangerous  to  the  purely  impulsive  man. 

LIX 

As  the  will  to  refrain  grows  with  the  elimina- 
tion of  conflicting  and  egotistic  impulses,  so  men 
of  character  tend  to  develop  in  ways  of  conduct 
free  from  mutual  conflict  and  thus  to  fall  into 
1  social  accord.  Justice,  the  mother  of  all  the  civic 
[  virtues,  is  the  will  to  produce  the  same  balance 
]  in  society  as  already  exists  in  the  individual.  The 
great  source  of  social   discord   is  the  injustice 
springing  from  the  diversity  of  unrestrained  de- 
sires and  from  the  warfare  of  egotisms. 

LX 

There  is  a  common  delusion  that  civic  virtue 
can  be  produced  by  instinctive  sympathy  and 
does  not  need  the  painful  restraint  of  the  inner  or 
outer  check.  Now  this  sympathy  is  that  supposed 
law  of  personality  by  which  we  invariably  feel 
the  pleasure  of  others  as  our  pleasure  and  the 
pain  of  others  as  our  pain;  and  which,  conse- 
quently, would  always  lead  us,  if  free  to  follow 
our  instincts,  so  to  act  as  to  affect  others  with 
pleasure.  But  by  the  very  nature  of  personality 
such  a  law  cannot  exist.   Xhe.ieeling  of  pleasure 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      281 

and  pain  is  the  sense  of  the  increase  or  diminution 
of  our  Hfe.  In  so  far  as  the  pleasure  of  another 
may  result  in  activities  beneficial  to  ourselves,  or 
creates  the  expectation  of  similar  pleasure  in  our- 
selves, and  thus  enlarges  our  sense  of  life,  it  may 
awaken  sympathetic  pleasure  in  us.  And  pain  in 
another  by  a  corresponding  process  may  awaken 
sympathetic  pain  in  us.  But,  on  the  contrary, 
the  pleasure  of  another  is  equally  capable  of 
awakening  an  antipathetic  pain  in  us,  when  it 
means  an  activity  in  the  other  that  is  detrimental 
to  us  and  diminishes  our  sense  of  life;  and  the 
pain  of  another  may  awaken  an  antipathetic 
pleasure  in  us.  The  notion  of  this  instinctive 
sympathy  as  a  power  in  itself  capable  of  taking 
the  place  of  the  inner  or  outer  check  is  an  error 
of  romanticism,  which  forgets  that  the  personal 
feelings  belong  to  the  flux  and  tend  to  variety 
and  difference.  As  it  slurs  over  the  distinctions 
among  men  in  the  abstract  conception  of  human- 
ity, it  is  called  humanitarianism. 


LXI 

Charity,  in  the  scriptural  meaning  of  the  word, 
^Js  justice  accompanied  with  feeling.  It  is  the  sure 
and  impersonal  sympathy  of  happiness  as  dis- 
tinguished   from   the  precarious    and    personal 
sympathyof  pleasure. 


282    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

LXII 

Friendship  and  love  are  special  forms  of  sym- 
pathy. The  lowest  form  of  friendship  results  from 
that  accident  of  circumstances  by  which  the 
pleasures  and  pains  of  two  persons  commonly  fall 
together;  its  highest  form  results  from  a  mutual 
feeling  of  charity.  Love  in  its  lowest  form  is  the 
,%;  %.  mere  desire  to  obtain  pleasure  from  another  with- 
>^  ^  out  care  for  his  or  her  pleasure  or  pain.  In  its 
middle  form  it  desires  that  the  person  beloved 
may  have  a  mutual  sense  of  pleasure.  As  this 
sense  of  mutuality  increases,  love  passes  into  a 
peculiarly  strong  and  fine  sympathy  of  charity. 
The  stability  of  friendship  and  love  grows  with 
their  approach  to  charity.  In  friendship,  and  to  a 
higher  degree  in  love,  the  subjective  imagination 
is  a  powerful  factor  in  so  iax,  as  it  embodies  our 
emotions  in  another  person.  Hence  the  close  rela- 
tion of  friendship,  and  the  still  closer  relation  of 
love,  to  artistic  creation.  From  the  pure  sympa- 
thy of  charity,  more  than  from  any  other  experi- 
ence of  life,  comes  the  assurance  that  the  rejec- 
tion of  the  world's  diversity  may  lead  not  to  blank 
isolation  but  to  some  inexpressible  communion  of 
all  spirits. 


LXIII 

Society  for  its  preservation  organizes  the  ex- 
ternal checks  in  the  form  of  government.  A  per- 
fect government  would  be  neither  a  crushing 


v/ 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      283 

despotism  nor  an  unrestrained  license;  its  aim 
would  be  to  bring  the  character  of  the  few  to  bear 
in  some  effective  way  upon  the  impulses  of  the 
many;  it  would  be  an  aristocracy  of  justice.  The 
theory  of  absolute  democracy  might  imply  that 
the  will  to  refrain  would  in  the  long  run  assert  its 
inner  potency  in  all  men  if  they  were  freed  from 
external  checks.  The  generality  of  men,  however, 
are  so  intermittently  conscious  of  the  inner  check 
that  practical  democracy,  whether  it  call  itself 
anarchy  or  socialism,  proceeds  on  the  theory  that 
the  dispositions  of  men  tend  of  themselves  to 
order  and  harmony;  it  is  in  essence  a  denial  of 
dualism  and  a  child  of  naturalism.  The  attempt 
to  introduce  either  anarchy  or  socialism,  by  re- 
moving the  influence  of  the  few  men  of  character, 
would  result  in  a  chaos  of  clashing  dispositions 
or  in  the  dominance  of  men  of  violent  egotism. 

LXIV 

It  is  impossible  to  give  a  simple  definition  of 
liberty,  for  the  reason  that  the  thing  itself  is  not 
simple,  but  complex.  Primarily,  liberty  is  an 
inner  state  which  depends  on  the  complete  con- 
trol of  the  desires  and  passions,  and  in  this  sense 
we  say:  "  The  truth  shall  make  you  free."  But 
liberty  is  also  an  outer  state  which  can  arise  only 
when  society  is  so  organized  as  to  impose  no  re- 
straint upon  the  actions  of  the  man  who  is  him- 
self free.  Were  all  men  free  in  themselves,  the 


284    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

perfect  form  of  government  would  be  an  absolute 
anarchy.  As  the  world  is,  the  freest  society  is 
that  in  which  custom  and  law  impose  the  least 
restraint  upon  the  man  who  is  self -governed,  and 
the  greatest  restraint  upon  the  man  who  is  not 
self-governed. 

LXV 

Individual  morahty  is  conduct  controlled  by 
the  inner  check.  Social  morality  is  conduct  con- 
trolled by  the  external  check  of  society.  In  gen- 
eral these  two  forms  of  morality  are  in  accord, 
and,  looking  at  the  world  at  large,  we  may  safely 
say  that  individual  morality  is  a  minute  factor  in 
its  conduct  in  comparison  with  social  morality. 
When,  however,  a  man  has  advanced  in  charac- 
ter far  beyond  the  character  of  the  community,  it 
may  happen  that  his  moral  sense  will  differ  widely 
from  the  social  code.  In  that  case  he  must  rely 
upon  the  approval  of  conscience,  which  is  only 
another  name  for  self-knowledge  developed  by 
the  exercise  of  the  inner  check.  In  so  transgress- 
ing the  social  code  he  acts  at  his  extreme  peril. 
If  he  errs,  the  responsibility  is  upon  himself,  since 
he  acts  from  self-ignorance  and  not  from  self- 
knowledge. 

LXVI 

Since  the  inner  check  is  the  same  potentially 
in  all  men  and  differs  only  in  effect  as  it  acts  or 
remains  quiescent,  each  man  is  certainly  respons- 
ible for  his  character  or  lack  of  character.   He 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      285 

may  not  be  responsible  for  his  disposition  out  of 
which  character  is  developed,  and  which  by  some 
incalculable  chance  came  to  him  originally  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  other  men.  There  is  thus  in 
conduct  a  paradox  of  responsibility  and  irrespons- 
ibility corresponding  to  the  dualism  of  conscious- 
ness. If  we  look  into  ourselves,  we  are  likely  to 
be  conscious  of  voluntary  attention  or  inatten- 
tion at  the  root  of  our  habits,  and  to  magnify 
accordingly  the  element  of  responsibility.  If  we 
regard  the  lives  of  others,  we  are  likely  to  exagger- 
ate the  power  of  their  disposition,  and  to  regard 
them  as  irresponsible.  These  are  the  inner  and 
the  outer  ways  of  viewing  life. 

LXVII 

There  are  those  who  wish  to  escape  the  idea  of 
responsibility,  yet  shrink  from  the  terrors  of  a 
purely  fortuitous  world ;  such  men  deny  the  ele- 
ment of  absolute  inhibition  on  the  one  hand,  and 
assert  on  the  other  that  our  dispositions  come  to 
us  determined  by  the  law  of  inheritance  or  by 
some  other  fatality  of  the  flux  itself.  This  theory 
merely  removes  the  necessity  of  meaningless 
chance  to  an  ever-vanishing  distance.  Chance 
and  fate,  in  the  deterministic  sense,  accident  and 
natural  law,  are  not  contradictory  ideas,  but  dif- 
ferent aspects  only  of  the  flux.  Law,  as  the  rule 
of  cause  and  effect,  has  no  meaning  except  in  the 
realm  of  volition,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  irrational 


286    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

relation  of  the  inner  check  and  the  flux.  There  is 
approximate  sequence  in  nature,  but  no  rule  of 
cause  and  effect  except  in  so  far  as  nature  is  sub- 
dued to  moral  law. 

LXVIII 

On  the  contrary,  not  only  many  individual 
minds  but  entire  peoples,  wishing  to  bring  the 
whole  of  conduct  under  responsibility,  have  con- 
ceived the  actual  disposition  of  a  man  as  the  re- 
sult of  an  infinite  series  of  lives,  the  will  in  each 
life  being  able  to  modify  to  a  slight  extent  the 
inherited  temperament.  In  the  infinity  of  time 
a  man  is  thus  the  responsible  creator  of  his  own 
temperament,  and,  in  so  far  as  no  impulse  can 
arise  without  desire,  of  his  disposition.  It  may 
be  said  that  this  theory  of  metempsychosis,  or 
the  law  of  karma,  merely  conceals  the  difficulty 
by  removing  the  element  of  irresponsibility  to  an 
ever-vanishing  distance.  Yet  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  only  by  karma  can  the  rule  of  cause 
and  effect  be  extended  to  the  whole  of  life,  and 
that  this  recognition  of  responsibility  has  a  deep 
sanction  in  tradition. 

LXIX 

The  practical  difficulty  in  judging  conduct 
comes  from  regarding  the  large  things  of  life 
instead  of  the  small.  Every  man  knows  his  free- 
dom to  follow  or  check  the  slight  insignificant  im- 


DEFINITIONS   OF    DUALISM      287 

pulse  when  it  arises ;  he  loses  sight  of  this  freedom 
when  he  is  impelled  in  a  certain  direction  by  a 
habit  which  is  the  result  of  innumerable  unchecked 
impulses.  In  the  same  way  the  responsibility  for 
taste  lies  in  the  small  discriminations  of  pleasure. 
The  beginning  of  evil  is  inattention,  or  indolence; 
its  middle  term  is  self-ignorance;  its  end  is  either 
inconsequence  or  excess,  dissipation  of  character 
or  egotism.  Insight  never  forgets  the  beginning 
in  the  end,  or  the  end  in  the  beginning. 

LXX 

In  all  this  philosophy  of  insight  there  is  a  con- 
stant assumption  which  has  not  been  explained. 
What  is  this  distinction  of  good  and  evil,  of  bene- 
fit and  detriment,  with  which  the  action  or  inac- 
tion of  the  inner  check  is  concerned?  It  might  be 
answered  that  good  is  harmony,  or  self-consist- 
ency. Amid  the  ceaseless  change  and  hetero- 
geneous motion  of  the  flux  the  effect  of  the  inner 
check  is  to  call  a  certain  pause  and  so  to  create 
the  opportunity  of  fusing  a  present  and  a  past 
mipulse.  If  these  impulses  are  dissimilar  they  will 
counteract  each  other.  If  they  arc  similar  they 
will  combine.  Such  a  reinforced  impulse  will  be 
stronger  than  single  unreinforced  impulses;  it 
will  tend  to  gather  to  itself  other  similar  impulses 
and  thus  to  make  a  wave  of  harmony  in  the 
stream.  As  a  man  is  not  alone  but  is  a  part  of  the 
universe,  this  particular  wave  will  be  reinforced 


288    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

in  so  far  as  it  corresponds  with  other  harmonies 
outside  of  himself,  so  that  by  a  common  check,  or 
negation,  a  single  uniform  harmony,  or  good, 
tends  to  pervade  the  universal  flux.  But  such  a 
theory  leaves  the  essential  difficulty  unsolved. 
Why  is  harmony  strong  or  good?  Are  we  not 
really  starting  with  the  assumption  of  a  universal 
good  and  then  working  round  to  it  under  another 
name?  And  why,  even  if  such  a  good  is  assumed, 
does  the  inner  check  stay  an  impulse  until  a  simi- 
lar impulse  arises  and  thereupon  cease  its  em- 
bargo? If  the  inner  check  is  itself  an  act  of 
attention  or  choice,  it  is  not  purely  negative,  but 
positive;  if  it  works  positively  within  the  fiux, 
it  is  not  a  pure  absolute,  but  is  itself  subject  to 
variation ;  and  we  are  left  with  only  the  universal 
world  of  change,  without  meaning  or  purpose  or 
value.  In  brief,  the  philosophy  of  dualism  does 
not  attempt,  as  do  the  metaphysical  systems,  to 
explain  the  coexistence  of  good  and  evil ;  neither 
does  it  undertake  to  bridge  the  gulf,  which  reason 
cries  upon  us  to  bridge,  between  negation  and 
affirmation,  the  one  and  the  many.  We  know 
that  there  is  within  us  a  stream  of  impulses  flow- 
ing from  abyss  to  abyss,  which  we  call  positive 
evil.  We  know  that  there  is  also  within  us  a 
negative  power  of  pause,  the  inner  check,  which 
we  call  absolute  good.  The  order  of  natural  life 
and  nature,  formed  so  to  speak  by  eddies  in  the 
stream,  at  once  changing  and  stable,  we  call  rela- 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      289 

tive  good;  implying  thereby  that  it  belongs 
purely  to  neither  element  of  our  being  alone,  but 
springs  from  an  incomprehensible  relation  of  the 
two  elements.  Of  this  relative  world  we  have  no 
true  knowledge,  but  only  opinion.  To  go  beyond 
this  insight  and  this  scepticism  is  to  pass  from 
philosophy  to  religion.  »-- 

LXXI 

Certain  men  have  reported  that  with  the  attain- 
ment of  perfect  peace  the  soul  can  rise  into  a  state 
wherein  the  desires  cease  altogether,  and  the 
other  element  of  consciousness,  as  the  higher  Self 
or  infinite  spirit,  abides  in  blissful  liberation. 
This  is  the  region  of  mysticism,  towards  which 
all  philosophy  and  all  religion  point;  it  is  akin 
to  idealism  in  so  far  as  idealism  also  pretends  to 
start  from  a  conception  of  the  absolute,  but  it 
differs  from  idealism  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  real  know- 
ledge of  victory  over  the  flux  and  not  a  rational 
denial  of  the  flux  which  immediately  falls  into  a 
confusion  of  absolute  and  relative  unity.  Mysti- 
cism surpasses  the  common  knowledge  of  man- 
kind, and  its  beatitude  is  not  the  happiness  of 
human  speech.  The  discipline  of  character  by 
which  we  are  prepared  for  the  transcendental  state 
is  manifest,  but  the  actual  attainment  is  a  leap 
into  the  void,  a  miraculous  transition  or  ecstasy, 
to  which  many  names  have  been  given,  but  all 
inadequate.   We  seem  sometimes  in  the  hushed 


ago    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

serenity  of  death  to  look,  as  It  were,  upon  a  vis- 
ible symbol  of  the  eternal  rest. 

LXXII 

The  complete  attainment  of  the  mystical  state 
would  mean  the  cessation  of  natural  existence, 
but  to  all  of  us  moments  may  come  when  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  inner  check  is  so  overpowering 
as  seemingly  to  sever  the  continuity  of  our  im- 
pulsive life.  The  memory  of  these  visionary  mo- 
ments, even  the  assurance  that  such  vision  is 
possible,  brings  to  the  mind  a  sense  of  the  posi- 
tive quality  of  that  inhibitive  element  of  con- 
/sciousness  which  otherwise  possesses  unity  only 
/through  its  negation  of  qualities.  This  conver- 
sion, by  which  the  heart  of  man  is  brought  to 
recognize  the  inner  check  as  the  constantly  in- 
dwelling spirit,  is  called Jaith.  By  faith  the  ever- 
lasting No  becomes  the  everlasting  Yea.  Faith  is 
thus  not  the  will  to  believe,  but  the  flower  of  that 
insight,  or  self-knowledge,  which  grows  with  the 
will  to  refrain.  Neither  is  it  the  arbitrary  belief, 
contrary  to  experience,  that  all  is  right.  Its  goal 
is  the  liberation  from  dualism,  but  its  source  is . 
in  the  consciousness  of  a  dualism  which  embraces 
the  possibility  of  infinite  evil  as  well  as  infinite 
good.  Faith,  to  those  who  crave  a  definite  answer 
to  the  demands  of  reasonamTorthFimaginatibn^, 
may  seem  vague  and  unreal.  In  a  truer  sense  it  is 
the  most  definite  and  real  thing  in  life,  in  so  far  as 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      agx 

ijLliiiplies_ajconstant  intention  of  character  in  one 
direction.  ~"*^ 

LXXIII 

As  the  counterpart  of  insight  is  scepticism, 
so  the  counterpart  of  faith  is  disillusion  —  the 
knowledge  that  this  apparent  order  of  the  world 
is  not  of  the  world  itself,  and  that  beneath  the 
surface  of  all  we  see  and  feel,  beneath  the  very  act 
of  seeing  and  feehng,  lies  the  unredeemed  chaos 
of  desires  and  impressions,  unlimited,  unmeaning, 
unfathomable,  incalculable,  formless,  dark.  Life 
is  but  appearance,  and  this  personality  we  call 
by  our  name  is  but  illusion  within  illusion.  As  by 
reason  the  inner  check  can  be  defined  only  in 
negative  terms,  so  to  the  eye  of  faith  the  flux 
and  all  its  manifestations,  including  reason  itself, 
become  the  absolute  negation. 

We  are  such  stuff 
As  dreams  are  made  on,  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep. 

LXXIV 

In  some  men,  especially  in  an  age  of  spiritual 
apathy,  the  sense  of  disillusion  may  spring  up 
without  the  corresponding  assurance  of  faith.  To 
such  men  nothing  is  real ;  they  walk  in  a  place  of 
shadows,  and  feel  that  life  is  continually  slipping 
away  from  them  into  a  bottomless  abyss.  All 
their  labour  is  to  re-create  for  themselves  the  illu- 


? 


292     THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

slon  which  has  been  shattered,  or,  by  ceaseless 
occupation,  to  escape  the  dull  horror  of  the  void. 
Because  this  tedium  of  the  soul  is  due  to  an  in- 
ability on  their  part  to  surmount  the  materialism 
that  encompasses  them,  they  are  prone  to  take 
their  revenge  by  turning  upon  the  world  with 
cynical  bitterness. 

LXXV 

The  mystical  state  is  an  existence  in  eternity 
released  from  time,  and  as  a  man  grows  in  faith 
he  feels  himself  lifted  above  the  scorn  of  the 
hypocritic  days.  There  is  an  aspect  of  mysticism 
in  the  faculty  of  memory,  in  so  far  as  things  re- 
membered may  be  dissociated  from  relation  to 
the  evermoving  present  and  set  outside  of  the 
fiux  of  time.  The  consolations  of  faith  are  wont 
to  be  stronger  in  remembrance  of  the  past  than 
in  the  actuality  of  the  present.  Romantic  recol- 
lection is  a  dangerous  parody  of  this  doctrine. 
it  is  a  retreat  into  the  "tower  of  ivory"  to 
brood  over  past  sensations. 

LXXVI 

The  hope  of  immortality  is  a  longing  to  give 
to  the  future  the  mystical  virtue  of  the  past ;  it 
is  the  yearning  for  a  life  which  is  a  continuously 
moving  present  yet  freed  from  the  tyrannous 
flux  of  time.  The  happiness  of  immortality  is 
thus,  speaking  absolutely,  an  impossibility,  but 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM      293 

in  emotional  anticipation  it  may  be  merely  a 
name  for  the  eternal  liberation  of  the  spirit.  Nor 
does  such  an  argument  against  absolute  immor- 
tality imply  the  immediate  dissociation  of  the 
personal  elements  of  the  soul  with  the  dissolution 
of  the  material  body  at  death.  There  is  nothing 
to  show  that  these  elements  may  not  subsist  to- 
gether as  an  individual  entity  joined  with  some 
ethereal  body  for  an  indefinite  period  of  time; 
there  are  intimations  that  they  do  so  subsist. 

LXXVII 

Asceticism  is  the  attempt  to  attain  the  mysti- 
cal release  by  violence  rather  than  by  the  gradual 
discipline  of  philosophy  and  morality.  It  will 
appear  that  the  dominant  force  in  the  ascetic  life  is 
almost  always  some  overweening  pride  or  vanity 
or  hope  or  fear,  some  exorbitance  of  egotism,  and 
not  the  true  will  to  refrain.  Asceticism  is  thus 
liable  to  an  equally  violent  relapse  into  uncon- 
trolled impulses.  There  is  also  a  false  mysticism 
which  seeks  to  lose  the  consciousness  of  paradox- 
ical dualism  in  absolute  surrender  to  the  flux.  This 
is  the  temptation  of  antinomianism.  If  attained 
it  would  mean  the  complete  disorganization  of 
character  and  the  utter  dissipation  of  death.  The 
peril  of  the  mystical  path  is  profounder  than  the 
error  of  rationalism. 


294    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

LXXVIII 

Faith  and  disillusion  are  the  positive  and  neg- 
ative aspects  of  spirituality,  as  insight  and  scep- 
ticism are  the  positive  and  negative  aspects  of 
truth.  Insight  can  exist  without  faith,  and  scep- 
ticism without  disillusion ;  but  faith  and  disillusion 
cannot  exist  without  the  lower  forms  from  which 
they  spring.  The  life  of  spirituality  is  religion ;  it 
is  attended  with  a  heightened  sense  of  morality. 
Pure  religion  is  thus  philosophy  and  moral  health 
raised  to  a  consciousness  of  the  infinite  meaning 
of  unity  and  diversity.  It  is  a  conscious  submis- 
sion of  the  personal  elements  of  the  soul  to  the 
spirit,  bringing  to  the  soul  a  happiness  composed 
of  a  strange  mingling  of  humility  and  self-appro- 
val. By  this  self-surrender  to  the  higher  Self,  we 
understand  the  meaning  of  the  words.  In  la  sua 
voluntade  h  nostra  pace,  and  of  that  older  say- 
ing, "  He  that  loseth  his  life  for  my  sake  shall 
find  it."  In  common  practice  religion  is  a  com- 
plicated mood  into  which  enter  in  varying  de- 
grees insight  and  faith,  scepticism  and  disillusion, 
morality  and  mythology.  Holiness  is  spirituaHty 
coloured  by  mythology. 

LXXIX 

Mythology  is  the  act  of  the  imagination  by 
which  we  people  the  world  with  daemonic  beings 
made  in  the  likeness  of  our  own  souls.  It  is  either 


DEFINITIONS   OF   DUALISM     295 

rational  or  spontaneous  according  as  it  follows 
the  dictates  of  reason  or  itself  takes  the  lead. 

LXXX 

Rational  mythology  varies  with  the  theories  of 
reason.  It  is  pantheistic  when  it  imagines  a  god  \^ 
after  the  abstractions  of  idealism;  panpsychic 
under  pragmatism;  deistic  under  science  and 
rationalism;  in  general,  naturalistic  under  nat- 
uralism. The  deity  of  rational  mythology,  as  it 
corresponds  to  an  abstract  conception  of  the 
inner  life,  is  vaguely  personal  and  is  barely  dis- 
tinguished from  the  metaphysical  hypotheses  of 
science.  The  insufificiency  and  falseness  of  all 
these  theories  are  shown  by  the  fact  that  they 
leave  no  room  for  the  reality  of  sin  and  suffering 
in  the  world.  They  do  not  properly  surmount 
evil,  but  ignore  it  or  attempt  to  explain  it  away. 

LXXXI 

Spontaneous  mythology  is  the  unreasoned 
work  of  the  imagination  projecting  our  imperfect 
self-knowledge  into  the  void  in  the  form  of 
dcemonic  personalities.  This  imagined  world  is 
closely  akin  to  art  and  literature,  but  differs 
from  them  in  so  far  as  it  is  evoked  more  immedi- 
ately from  the  two  elements  of  consciousness.  It 
is,  too,  less  the  deliberate  creation  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  more  the  joint  product  of  society.  To 
the  individual,  therefore,  it  seems  to  be  independ- 


296     THE    DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

ent  of  his  own  faculties  and  often  verges  upon  hal- 
,  1  ucination .  Belief  is  the  acceptance  of  the  creation s 
of  mythology  as  real ;  it  is  not  to  be  identified  with 
faith,  any  more  than  mythology  is  to  be  identi- 
fied^ with  religion. 

LXXXII 

The  beginning  of  spontaneous  mythology  is 
polytheism.  As  self-knowledge  grows,  the  dae- 
monic world  tends  to  fall  into  two  opposed  hosts 
or  personalities,  which  represent  the  dual  ele- 
ments of  consciousness  as  hostile  powers  of  good 
and  evil. 

_  _  LXXXIII 

In  Christianity  mythology  takes  the  form  of  a 
perfectly  righteous  deity  set  over  against  the 
totally  depraved  human  soul.  The  idea  of  a 
triune  God  is  an  imaginative  blending  of  the 
three  faculties  and  the  inner  check.  In  the  con- 
ception of  a  Christ  who  is  one  person  having  two 
natures,  divine  and  human,  there  is  an  attempt 
to  maintain  the  actuality  of  this  mythology  and 
at  the  same  time  to  restore  it  symbolically  to  the 
dualism  of  man's  consciousness.  The  atonement 
through  the  sacrifice  of  Christ's  human  nature  is 
a  symbol  of  the  painful  control  of  the  flux  by  the 
inner  check,  ending  in  the  mystical  state  of  lib- 
eration. By  belief  in  the  act  of  Christ  we  are 
assured  of  our  own  ultimate  control  of  our  impuls- 


DEFINITIONS    OF    DUALISM      297 

ive  nature,  which  in  mythology  is  regarded  as 
sin,  or  disobedience  to  the  law  of  God.  So  a  man 
is  said  to  attain  to  salvation,  or  justification,  by 
faith,  meaning  by  belief.  The  insoluble  paradox 
of  grace  and  free-will  is  the  mythological  coun- 
terpart of  the  relation  of  the  inner  check  and 
attention:  in  either  case  there  is  an  appeal  to 
the  personal  element  of  the  soul  to  act  on  its  own 
initiative  as  it  can  only  act  under  the  control 
of  a  power  not  itself. 

LXXXIV 

Worship  is  an  act  designed  to  fortify  belief 
with  emotion,  and  thus  to  make  of  mythology 
a  personal  possession  of  the  soul.  In  its  higher 
Christian  type  it  is  an  act,  public  or  private,  for 
the  purpose  of  glorifying  God  and  humiliating 
sinful  human  nature.  The  commonest  cere- 
mony of  worship  is  a  more  or  less  symbolic  sacri- 
fice, which  in  Christianity  takes  the  form  of  the 
eucharist. 

LXXXV 

The  purest  form  of  spontaneous  mythology, 
the  form  that  approaches  most  nearly  to  abso- 
lute religion,  is  the  simple  belief  in  an  infinite 
unseen  God,  source  and  goal  of  the  human  spirit, 
and  the  unquestioning  acceptance  of  the  marks 
of  order  and  beauty  in  nature  as  the  footsteps  of 
the  creator  in  a  world  which,  without  his  presence. 


298    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

would  sink  into  the  bleak  confusion  of  chaos. 
The  weakness  _pf  this  bare  monotheism  is  the 
danger  that,  while  surrendering  the  comforts  of 
tradition  and  the  richer  interpretations  of  ex- 
perience, it  may  fall  short  of  the  higher  mystic 

,  ■r«vr,.-..iir'-     iiirrir'TM*«ii««— ■mi    "     '"""  "i"*""-'- 

faith. 

LXXXVI 

Theology  is  an  attempt  to  superimpose  the 
abstracting  activity  of  metaphysics  upon  the 
personal  dualism  of  spontaneous  mythology.  Its 
high  theme  is  the  nature  of  God  and  of  evil.^. 
Theologians  have  ransacked  language  for  words 
that  will  define  a  being  who  is  at  once,  and  in  the 
same  substance,  both  infinite  and  personal,  but 
they  can  no  more  do  this  than  we  can  express 
the  inner  check  in  terms  of  the  flux.  With  equal 
zeal  theologians  have  tried  to  reconcile  the  belief 
in  a  benevolent  and  all-powerful  creator  with  the 
insistent  sense  of  evil  in  the  world,  but  they  can 
no  more  do  this  than  we  can  express  the  flux  as 
a  property  of  the  inner  check.  Theology  thus 
involves  a  self-destructive  process,  and  either 
kills  mythology  or  abdicates  in  a  superstition 
which  has  lost  connection  with  our  better  inner 
life.  When  mythology  ends,  either  rationalism  or 
insight  steps  in.  For  most  men  the  consequence 
of  theology  is  a  state  of  fluctuation  between 
rationalism  and  superstition. 


DEFINITIONS   OF    DUALISM      299 

LXXXVII 

The  great  mystery  of  existence  is  the  relation 
of  the  human  soul  to  nature,  and  on  that  naked 
mystery  rest  the  reality  of  faith  and  the  symbol- 
ism of  belief.  The  soul,  whatever  may  be  its  ver- 
bal creed,  is  conscious  of  dualism;  consciousness 
and  dualism  for  the  soul  are,  indeed,  synonym- 
ous terms.  Nature,  on  the  contrary,  appears  to 
be  unconscious,  yet  to  display  some  of  the  same 
qualities  as  follow  the  dualism  of  the  soul.  From 
the  abhorrence  of  this  paradox  the  mind  seeks 
refuge  in  metaphysics  and  theology.  To-day  the 
popular  word  to  conjure  by  is  evolution,  that  is, 
the  attempt  to  conceal  the  paradox  by  involving 
it  in  the  long  operations  of  time.  But  evolution, 
conceived  as  a  purely  mechanical  process  which 
would  reduce  the  soul  to  uniformity  with  nature 
by  denying  dualism  altogether,  is  refuted  by  con- 
sciousness. And  evolution,  conceived  as  the  work 
of  some  immanent  final  cause  which  would  raise'^'^'^^''^]  "I 
nature  into  conformity  with  the  soul,  must  accept 
the  apparent  absurdity  of  regarding  all  nature  as 
endowed  with  consciousness.  It  cannot  properly 
hold  that  consciousness  is  a  gradual  product  of 
development;  for  consciousness  is  a  fundamental 
reality,  and  cannot  be  conceived  as  springing 
unevoked  from  any  unconscious  reality.  By  a 
kind  of  compromise  it  is  possible  to  say  that  con- 
sciousness suddenly  intervenes  at  some  point  in 


300     THE    DRIFT   OF    ROMANTICISM 

the  development  of  nature  as  a  deus  ex  machina, 
but  this  is  to  break  the  chain  of  evolution  and 
merely  explains  the  unknown  by  the  unknown. 
When  we  undertake  to  form  a  conception  of  na- 
ture as  a  whole,. we  are  compelled  by  the  faculty 
of  memory  to  regard  it  as  a  sequence  in  time, 
just  as  we  are  compelled  by  reason  and  imagina- 
jion  to  regard  it  as  extension  in  space.  So  far 
evolution  is  properly  the  scientific  complement 
to  physics.  But  the  attempt  to  involve  con- 
sciousness and  morality  in  this  natural  sequence 
is  doomed  to  failure.  The  presumption  of  ante- 
evolutionary  science  declared  that  whatever  is 
is  right.  The  presumption  of  evolutionary  sci- 
ence declares  that  whatever  is  is  better  than 
what  was.  In  either  case  science,  so  soon  as  it 
passes  beyond  the  classification  of  phenomena  to 
a  naturalistic  philosophy,  is  a  liar  and  the  father 
of  lies.  Better  the  frank  unreason  of  mythology 
than  this  labyrinth  of  intellectual  deception. 

LXXXVIII 

Scepticism  has  its  part  in  religion  as  well  as 
in  philosophy.  On  the  one  hand,  it  withholds  us 
from  accepting  the  creations  of  the  mythological 
imagination  as  the  exact  counterpart  of  reality, 
and  is  the  foe  of  credulity  and  fanaticism;  on 
the  other  hand,  it  restrains  us  from  asserting 
positively  that  there  is  nothing  at  the  heart  of 
mythology  which  corresponds  to  a  variously  in- 


DEFINITIONS    OF    DUALISM      301 

terpreted  revelation  of  the  order  of  the  universe. 
Its  action  upon  a  spontaneous  mythology,  corre- 
sponding to  the  dualism  of  self-knowledge,  is  thus 
to  hold  the  mind  in  a  state  of  suspense,  whereas  it 
acts  as  an  absolute  negation  upon  theology  and 
rational  mythology  which  spring  from  presump- 
tuous self-ignorance. 

LXXXIX 

With  scepticism  goes  the  true  humility  of  relig- 
ion, which  is  ready  to  join  devoutly  in  any  genu- 
inely traditional  worship,  trusting  that  in  this 
way  faith  may  be  enriched  and  the  indolence  of 
doubt  expelled.  No  man,  without  peril  to  his 
religious  life,  can  do  violence  to  his  mythological 
instinct.  Faith  should  develop  gradually  out  of 
belief,  and  pure  spirituality  out  of  holiness,  as 
a  man  grows  in  self-knowledge  and  character. 
There  are  few  men,  but  one  man  here  and  there, 
who  can  rise  to  the  clear  vision  of  faith  unsup- 
ported by  belief  in  a  God.  Religion  is  equally 
endangered  by  atheism  and  by  belief  in  a  God 
who  corresponds,  not  to  the  developing  know- 
ledge of  the  inner  check,  but  to  some  rationalistic 
denial  of  dualism. 


XC 

Self^recollection  Is  the  quiet  and  deliberate 

gathering  ofliHe  mind  from  the  many  to  the  one. 
Prayer  is  the  same  act  directed  to  the  one  im- 


302    THE   DRIFT   OF   ROMANTICISM 

agined  as  the  infinite,  eternal  God,  A  great  need 
of  mankind  is  for  more  recQllection  or  prayer. 
Therein  shall  a  man  learn  to  know  the  truth  of 
his  own  being  and  see  with  open  eyes  the  infinite 
consequences  to  himself  of  that  truth ;  and  from 
thence  he  shall  go  out  into  the  world  armed  with 
power  and  assured  in  peace.  Through  the  distrac- 
tions and  trials  of  life  he  shall  carry  with  him  the 
secret  possession  of  religious  philosophy,  which 
has  been  called  the  amor  dei  intellectualis;  rather, 
to  him  belongs  the  praise  of  Plato:  "Show  me 
a  man  able  to  see  both  the  one  and  the  many 
in  nature,  and  I  will  follow  in  his  footsteps  as 
though  he  were  a  god." 


THE  END 


Shelburne  Essays 

BY   PAUL    ELMER    MORE 
CONTENTS 

First  Series:  A  Hermit's  Notes  on  Thoreau  —  The  Solitude 
of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  —  The  Origins  of  Hawthorne  and 
Poe — The  Influence  of  Emerson  —  The  Spirit  of  Carlyle  — 
The  Science  of  English  Verse  —  Arthur  Symons  :  The  Two  II- 
iusions  —  The  Epic  of  Ireland  —  Two  Poets  of  the  Irish  Move- 
ment —  Tolstoy  •  or,  The  Ancient  Feud  between  Philosophy 
and  Art  —  The  Religious  Ground  of  Humanitarianism. 

Second  Series:  Elizabethan  Sonnets  ^  Shakespeare's  Son- 
nets—  Lafcadio  Hearn  —  The  First  Complete  Edition  of 
Hazlitt — Charles  Lamb — Kipling  and  FitzGerald  —  George 
Crabbe  —  The  Novels  of  George  Meredith  —  Hawthorne : 
Looking  before  and  after — Delphi  and  Greek  Literature  — 
Nemesis  ■  or,  The  Divine  Envy. 

Third  Series:  The  Correspondence  of  William  Cowper  — 
Whittier  the  Poet  —  The  Centenary  of  Sainte-Beuve  —  The 
Scotch  Novels  and  Scotch  History  —  Swinburne  —  Chris- 
tina Rossetti —  Why  is  Browning  Popular?  — A  Note  on 
Byron's  "  Don  Juan"  —  Laurence  Sterne  —  J.  Henry  Short- 
house —  The  Quest. 

Fourth  Series:  The  Vicar  of  Morwenstow — Fanny  Burney 

—  A  Note  on  "  Daddy  "  Crisp — George  Herbert  —  John 
Keats  —  Benjamin  Franklin  —  Charles  Lamb  again  —  Walt 
Whitman  —  William  Blake  —  The  Theme  of  "Paradise 
Lost" — The  Letters  of  Horace  Walpole. 

Fifth  Series  :  The  Greek  Anthology  —  The  Praise  of  Dick- 
ens —  George  Gissing  —  Mrs.  Gaskell  —  Philip  Freneau  — 
Thoreau 's  Journal  —  The  Centenary  of  Longfellow  —  Don- 
ald G.  Mitchell  —James  Thomson  ("  B.  V.")  —Chesterfield 

—  Sir  Henry  Wotton. 

Sixth  Series  {Studies  of  Religious  Dualism).  The  Forest 
Philosophy  of  India  —  The  Bhagavad  Gita  —  Saint  Augus- 
tine —  Pascal  —  Sir  Thomas  Browne  —  Bunyan  —  Rousseau 

—  Socrates  —  The  Apology —  Plato. 

Seventh  Series  :  Shelley —  Wordsworth —  Hood  — Tenny- 
son —  William  Morris —  Louisa  Shore  —  Thomas  Bailey  Al- 
drich  —  Francis  Thompson  —  The  Socialism  of  G.  Lowes 
Dickinson  —  The  Pragmatism  of  William  James  —  Criticism 

—  V^ictorian  Literature. 

Eighth  Series  (The  Drift  of  Romanticism) '.  William  Beck- 
ford  —  Cardinal  Newman  -^  Walter  Pater —  Fiona  Macleod 

—  Nietzsche —  Huxley —  Definitions  of  Dualism. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


U-v   — 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

lllllll'l  II'!  I''  'II  ■{  II'  11'"'  'll'l'l"!  I'l  'III 


AA    000  628  251     1 


NIVERSITY  OF  CA.,  RIVERSIDE  LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY 


Q  i9in  nnRQQ  /iri  i 


